The franchise's premise is slightly different from the very beginning, as nobody gets abducted in "Taken 3." Instead, Mills hurtles across Los Angeles partly to evade lawmen wrongly convinced he has killed his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), and also to look for, find and kill those who framed him of the murder. SHOWCLOCK: Find theater listings and times
Strangely, Besson and his long-running series co-writer Robert Mark Kamen seem to have overlooked the one thing that made "Taken" and "Taken 2" tick: the appeal of leading man Neeson, the anguished and aging action-hero who tries, with solitary and superhuman effort, to save his family. That may compromise the movie's performance at the box office. Replacing the first two films' simplistic, man-on-the-run premise with a stuttering plot comparatively light on action and stuffed with red herrings and inconsequential characters (Forest Whitaker, for one, plays one of the most vacuous roles of his career), Besson's team has signed off the trilogy with a whimper rather than the kind of unfettered bang delivered by the first two films. Liam Neeson's perennially pursued, particularly skilled operative tears down Los Angeles in the final installment of Luc Besson's avenger-on-the-run franchise "Taken 3" begins with CIA operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) realizing that surprising his college-age daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), for her birthday is not exactly part of his now-famous "particular set of skills." It's a cutesy touch that points to producer Luc Besson's ham-fisted attempt to introduce some variety into the latest entry in his money-raking franchise.