Taken 2  ★★½  Taken 3 ★★ 

I THINK I might be losing it.

I was positive that Taken 2 was awful and Taken 3 was good.

Turns out on re-watch that Taken 2 is half-decent and I couldn’t recall one damned bit of Taken 3 which turned out to be the worst of this action trilogy.

Created by Frenchman Luc Besson (Leon, Subway, The Fifth Element) it stars Liam Neeson as doting dad Brian Mills who also happens to be a retired black-ops mercenary guy, or something like that.

The original film started a trend of older actors playing action leads and since then we’ve had the likes of Keanu Reeves, Sean Penn and Denzel Washington in similar roles.

In Taken, Mills went to France in search of his daughter, played by Maggie Grace, who had been kidnapped by sex slavers and proceeded to wreak havoc, killing a couple of dozen people in the successful quest to bring her safely home back to his former wife (Famke Janssen) and her rich new husband..

In Taken 2, it turns out about a half-dozen of the men he killed came from the same eastern European village and the family matriarch has vowed revenge.

This time Mills has his hands full with both mum and daughter being snatched. He’s also grabbed and tortured a little, but of curse manages to escape thanks to his incredible observational abilities and resourcefulness with the aid of his daughter.

Maggie Grace’s character is annoying throughout the trilogy. She’s not a great  actress and her action scenes, particularly the car chase during which she evades multiple police cars around the narrow streets of Istanbul despite not yet having her drivers’ licence, are unbelievably stupid.

And what’s with Mills’ mercenary buddies who are these bad asses always trying to coax him out of retirement but only ever seem to drink and play golf?

The film redeems itself with some exceptional action, strong editing and music and, of course, Neeson just seems to always make an art out of looking bored shitless.

And then we have Taken 3. Oh boy!

The wonderfully named Olivier Megatron again has the directing duties and he certainly still knows his way around some good action scenes, including a car reverse down an elevator shaft.

Forrest Whitaker does his usual brilliant, autistic thing as a cop and there are a couple of good character actors as the main villains with one or two decent fights.

But that’s about where it ends I’m afraid.

The story deviates from the other two films with Mills being framed for a murder by some people for some reason that again I can’t recall now.

It’s just that type of film. You watch it and think ‘meh’ and the next morning can’t remember bugger all.

There is way too much Maggie Grace and the list of implausibilities requires far too much suspension of disbelief.

Sorry Liam, but John Wick kicks your ass.