Taken 3: The Edge of Darkness

“Taken 3: The Edge of Darkness” Fails to Live up to Franchise’s Namesake

The “Taken” franchise has developed a basic formula for creating simply awesome movies. The formula is easy to follow: A loving family man is an extreme badass underneath his public persona. Something bad happens to this man’s daughter. The man takes revenge on everyone involved in hurting his daughter: in a violent, explosive, bloody, completely unrealistic, and just totally awesome way. And then the movie ends some way or another but by then no one should really care. “Taken 1” followed this formula to perfection. “Taken 2: A Law Abiding Citizen” added some variables but stuck to protocol and it resulted in a wonderful movie. Mel Gibson and all the other assholes involved in creating “Taken 3: The Edge of Darkness” somehow, someway, royally fucked up this incredibly easy process.

Let’s start with Mel Gibson’s character, some Boston cop. We all know Mel Gibson has the tools to play a badass, but for some reason his character in this movie is just another cop with a shitty Boston accent. He has no secret special-forces background, no experience torturing people, and for all we know he hasn’t even killed anyone yet. What a loser. Add to that the fact that Mel’s character, some Boston cop, starts going bat-shit crazy (a beautiful parallel to real life, actually) and starts seeing/hearing his dead daughter at the most inconvenient times during already mind-numbingly longs scenes.

Maybe the dull, cheesy conversation between Mel and his dead daughter would be tolerable if it were surrounded by more killing. But they are not. In fact, there are not nearly enough foreign people murdered in this movie. In “Taken 1” Liam Neeson murders roughly two-thirds of France, but Mel only kills a few well-to-do white American men, who are supposedly the bad guys. While…get this…the hippies…are you ready…the dirty, smelly hippies are the good guys. The GOOD GUYS!

The rest of the movie can be summarized as follows: The hippies are trying to stop nuclear testing or something equally as clichéd; there is a fat guy with an accent who has something to do with the bad guys, you can’t be sure though because the dialogue between Mel and the fat guy is almost indecipherable through their accents; the government is the bad guy; Mel’s daughter is murdered way too soon to get an accurate reading of her babe-level; and, again, Mel Gibson doesn’t kill nearly enough foreigners. Overall I give this movie 3/10 chops. “Taken 3: The Edge of Darkness” is stupid and in way over its’ head; however, the action scenes, though few and far between, are actually decently badass and save the movie from complete and utter failure. Let's hope the 2011 release of Taken 4 can redeem this once proud franchise.