Olivier Megaton
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
The scene may even be a nod to Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford’s standoff in The Fugitive, where Jones’s “I don’t care” to Ford’s claims of innocence was a ruthlessly existential statement.
Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote the first two movies, lift most of this one from The Fugitive (1993), right down to the relationship between Neeson and the maverick lawman on his tail.
Instead of rescuing a family member from Albanian mobsters in yet another world capital, Bryan Mills—the throat-punching, elbow-chopping ex-CIA operative most people think of as simply “Liam Neeson”—finds himself framed for murder in L.A. It’s a conventional riff on The Fugitive, complete with Forest Whitaker in the Tommy Lee Jones role, but at least it’s tapping into a set of fears and fantasies—about divorce and being replaced by a step-parent—that are distinct from those of the original.
The lack of a central abduction may have been a conscious effort by Besson and co-writer Robert Mark Kamen to break from routine, but this substituted plot invites easy comparison to the still-crackerjack thrills of 1993’s The Fugitive, with Forest Whitaker’s dogged detective Dotzler standing in for Tommy Lee Jones as Neeson scampers across Los Angeles in pursuit of his tormentors.
Things go largely according to plan from the jump, with a plot that provides very little in the surprise department, especially if you remember back to 1993 and The Fugitive .
So in Taken 3, we get to watch Bryan Mills try to save his own neck –in the style of The Fugitive’s Richard Kimble (although in comparison, Kimble comes across a lot smarter and more competent) as opposed to playing a heroic family man, which pretty much kills all the fun of the franchise’s previous two installments.
Just as Charles Bronson reluctantly saddled up for increasingly belabored Death Wish sequels well into his 70s, Taken 3 wheezes by with an inescapable sense of fatigue as Neeson enters his 60s.
(Worth noting here that Neeson’s big break was as a heavy in the final “Dirty Harry” movie.)
When Rue (Amandla Stenberg, "Colombiana"), the little tribute from District 11 who shyly teamed up with our heroine, is killed, Lawrence makes it affecting, but her defiant gesture towards game cameras is followed by a brief snippet of rioting (labelled District 11 and so tightly shot it could be happening in a closet) which doesn't really convey the threat Katniss is becoming.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Directed by Chad Stahelski
influenced by Transporter 3 (2008)
Visuals
Parabellum ’s new kind of violence lacks the visual flair of Olivier Megaton’s Transporter 3 , and the video-game script departs from the classical virtues of Luc Besson’s action flicks.
The movie was largely well received, and was early enough in Liam Neeson's career as old-man-actioner to not feel outlandish (coming before the infamous 15-cut fence jump of "Taken 3").
Alas, those characters have been ditched in favor of Russian mafiosos, who come across as pale imitations of the tattooed fiends in David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises.”
Yes, there’s a gnarly wrong-way freeway chase out of the “Lethal Weapon” playbook.
This time, Mills brings in his trusted colleagues to help him (including Leland Orser) and they roll out some of the most ridiculous technology, stuff we’re more likely to see in a “Mission: Impossible” movie.
Thankfully the filmmakers do him the dignity of Kincaid taking a bullet to the lower leg in the beginning skirmish of the film that allows him the dignity of not doing Harrison Ford -“Crystal Skull” or Liam Neeson “Taken 3” old man running through obstacle after killer euro trash obstacle.
That year alone it shared multiplex time with Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer , Kevin Costner’s 3 Days To Kill and the granddaddy of them all, Liam Neeson in Taken 3 .
The action sequences, while not ascending to the preposterous, physics-defying levels of The Fast and the Furious movies, are over-the-top.
It’s precisely that environment that enables Denzel Washington to go full-on Jason Voorhees during the violent final act of “The Equalizer,” an origin story of sorts for a just short-of-super hero of the type also embodied in recent years by Neeson (“Taken” and “Taken 2”), Matt Damon (the “Bourne” series) and Tom Cruise (“Jack Reacher”).
I haven't been so viscerally angry at the cutting in an action setpiece since the opening of Quantum of Solace .