I was looking forward to this movie and I have to say that I was a wee bit disappointed. It is a decent enough action movie but the script leaves somewhat to be desired. A good chunk of the movie is quite good, actually it is very good, but there are some crucial scenes that, in my opinion, really drags it down to a rather mediocre level.
The plot is a fairly classical, not a very intelligent nor a very original, one. When trying to push the third sequel in a series Hollywood have a tendency to fall back on certain “trusted” elements. Like, make the hero haunted by the law and / or the government (no I do not consider the government to be the same as the law) or kill off some of the main (or at least likable) characters.
In this movie they are doing both. I do not know why this always seems to be the standard solution because I certainly do not like it. Are the general movie going audience really falling for these, in my mind, cheap scripts? I guess they must be since this formula is repeated over and over again. Well, it is not for me to judge other peoples tastes and if I would have been a bean counter for the movie industry then it would really have been my duty to squeeze out as much money as possible regardless of whether I thought it would make a good movie or not, However, I am not. I am a consumer of movies and my personal opinion is that these plot elements are pretty cheap and not really to my liking. But then, that is just me.
Anyway, the movie is not really bad. It is a decent enough action movie and, in general, I quite like the performance of Liam Neeson. He is the half-sad, silent and, most of all, ass-kicking hero that I like. He is pretty much what holds this movie together. Well, that was perhaps not entirely fair. Forrest Whitaker is doing a quite good job as well. Most of the other characters are mostly fillers. The main bad guy started off fairly good but he really never got the chance to shine and the ending scenes with the big confrontation was…well I would say pretty pathetic.
This brings us to my man gripe with this movie. Up until this point Liam Neeson was really playing the big bad, and really skilled, killing machine. The way he, with the help of his friends, entered the bad guy’s stronghold was perhaps not very innovative (seen that, been there, and done that) but at least it was professional. After that however it turned into a bloody joke. Not only does our hero walk into a heavily defended stronghold carrying only a small pea shooter but every time he manages to liberate a decent weapon from the hopelessly incompetent bad guys he throws it away and, occasionally, picks up another pea shooter. What the f…?
Then we have the fairly ridiculous big fight at the end where the bad guy runs around in his underwear. That was just embarrassing. Maybe I could have swallowed the underwear thing if it was not for the fact that Lieam Neeson suddenly lost all kind of professionalism. Apart from the pea shooter syndrome mentioned before he just gets himself wacked by this maniac until, in the last minute, he miraculously recovers and gets the upper hand. There were a few minor glimpses of intelligence in the whole scene but they were never really exploited.
On the whole, if would say this was a fairly decent and enjoyable action movie but I was expecting more from it. If the last third of the movie would have matched the first two thirds then my rating would have been higher. Maybe Liam Neeson is not a big enough star, although I like him a lot, to pick his roles like he wants to but I would say that he should indeed be a bit more picky and read the scripts before signing on.