Jamie
It should come as no surprise that when confronted with back-to-back bonus weeks involving the Dumb and Dumber franchise and the Taken franchise that we chose to double up on D&D and save Taken 3 for another time. As Jack from Lost would say, “We have to go back.” Mild spoiler here, but what a mistake! Not that Taken 2 is such an amazing BMT film that adding Taken 3 to the mix would have elevated the art of bad movie watching to new heights. And not that the Dumb and Dumber franchise was such a swing and miss from a BMT perspective. It’s more that after watching Taken 2 I thought to myself “ah yes, there is an obvious conclusion to this cohesive and yet diminishing tale. Let me take a look at the Wikipedia page and confirm.” At that point, once I read the barest details about Taken 3’s plot, my eyes bugged out of my head like a cartoon. It sounds totally insane and not at all what I expected. But that’s a tale for another day.
To recap, Taken in back, Jack! And boy does Bryan have a particular set of skills. Those skills? Being a great dad, awwww. His ex-wife Lennie is having trouble with her new husband, his daughter has a new boyfriend, and she’s trying to get her driver’s license. So everyone is vibing and Bryan invites them to Istanbul to get their groove back. Meanwhile an Albanian mobster rues the fact that Bryan killed his whole family so he decides to kill him in exchange. Back to Istanbul where Bryan is showing Kim around and explaining how he learned so much about the city from a book… so that’s his particular set of skills: reading. Ultimately, he and Lennie are captured while out at a bazaar, but Kim is able to hide with the help of her dad. Bryan tracks where he’s going and ends up being able to call Kim. He helps her very accurately find out where he is hidden and when she finds the location he has her drop a gun down to him. With that he is able to escape and save Kim, but Lennie is taken away to a different location. Bryan and Kim drive to the US Embassy where Kim is hidden away before Bryan uses his super reading brain to retrace his steps and find the mobster’s HQ. He kills everyone and when confronting the Big Bad he gives the guy a choice: leave them alone and live or don’t and die. The guy decides to not leave him alone and so Bryan kills him. This seems to be no problem for anyone and he heads on back home where Kim gets her license and they all meet her boyfriend over milkshakes while Lennie’s new husband is probably somewhere being sad. THE END.
Hahaha! Taken 2! And apparently this isn’t as crazy as it gets! The film starts exactly like you would expect. It’s perfect. Albanian thugs descend on Turkey and take his whole family hostage this time. I’m on board. More Taken, please (says Franchise Man). But once our boy Bryan is taken and Kim is left to pinpoint his location and save the day we descend close to a parody. Patrick took a screenshot of how Kim is meant to have pinpointed his location and it’s so wrong that you can’t help but laugh. Then when Bryan has to track down his wife at the mobster’s HQ it’s like you are watching an episode of The Mentalist or something where he uses his super brain and reading skillz to retrace his way through the streets of Istanbul. It’s absurd. So absurd that I assumed the third film also qualified for BMT because it is more of the same… from what I gather I’m so, so wrong. So I guess I’ll say that I enjoyed the absurd moments that this gave me. The rest was just a fine Taken movie. I wish it were more absurd, but that’ll have to wait for the next one.
Hot Take Clam Bake! So in the beginning of the film you see Bryan cleaning his car at the carwash. The attendant is like “yo, we can do that,” but Bryan knows exactly how he likes his car. Why? Cause HE IS THE CAR WASH ATTENDANT. That’s right, the Taken series is just the delusions of a saddo. His ex-wife is living it up with her rich husband. He never sees his daughter. So he dreams… dreams of his daughter appreciating his help prepping for the driver’s test. Dreams of racing to the embassy to save his daughter. Dreams of retracing the steps he remembers from when the baddies drove him to their HQ. Notice a theme? Cars. All involve cars. Why? Because he’s a car wash attendant and this is just a dream. Each car we see is a car he is washing in that moment. Hot Take Temperature: Hot Wax.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about Liam Neeson pre-bad knees running around Turkey hoping Maggie Grace can follow complex directions? Let’s go!
Hey, c’mon. You are lying yourself if you don’t think this is at least entertaining. It knows what it is (dumb) and it plays into it perfectly. It is a fine follow up to a film which is, in reality, not particularly good and has probably aged poorly (even from a purely action perspective).
The film is pretty nonsensical as well, with some great unintentional hilarity (all surrounding the purportedly what? 16 year old Maggie Grace? She was 29 at the time). Just look at this fucking picture:
… Maggie Grace is supposed to be drawing a 3km circle, so she measures out 3km with a string, and then attaches it to the top of the pen(?) and draws a circle that is way too small. It is hard to tell whether they end up lampshading this a bit as well since Neeson maybe even says that the circle is too small. No worries, she’s just going to lob a few grenades into downtown Istanbul and he’ll figure out where he is that way.
Let’s see. There is also a whole odd aside in which Neeson is friends with a bunch of other security experts who help him out by calling the Turkish authorities and get them … to let him go wandering around Istanbul to kill people after he crashed a car into the US Embassy? Fat fucking chance.
So you see, this movie is super dumb. But the action is at times good, and I also think there was a potential for a redeeming finale to the trilogy. Part 1: They take the wrong guy’s daughter and he goes and kills them. Part 2: The wider syndicate underestimates him again while trying to get revenge. Part 3: Man realizes the syndicate will never stop trying to hurt his family and takes the fight to them in Albania?
Apparently that isn’t what the third is about (by a long shot) which I have to assume is because the second was so poorly received they tried to tack out of the original idea and just made things worse.
Very much a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Turkey which is where the bulk of the film is set (not Albania, a boy can dream). I think that is it honestly, there isn’t even a twist. The movie is closest to Good and is arguably so depending on how you feel.
Read about my sequel to Taken in the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 