TAKEN 3

20th Century Fox

Rated: PG-13

Running time: 109 Minutes

Click below to watch the movie trailer of Taken 3.



In Twentieth Century Fox's Taken 3, Liam Neeson is wrongly accused of a horrible crime and is on the run from LAPD inspector Forrest Whitaker and the Los Angeles Police Department.

In the third and final film in the Taken series, and Written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, Neeson, Famke Janssen, and Maggie Grace return as Neeson gets a text to meet with his ex-wife Janssen when he discovers something horrible. Immediately the Los Angeles Police Department arrive to arrest him for a crime he did not commit. Neeson escapes and looks for the person who framed him while trying to protect his pregnant daughter Grace from suffering the same fate.

While I have always like Liam Neeson, this movie felt like a poor man's John Wick, although Neeson did do all of his own fighting sequences for the film.

Being a Trojan, I liked the fact that they used aerial footage of USC, and several extras were listed as USC students during Grace's university scenes.

Forrest Whitaker was pretty much wasted in this movie. I really had wanted him to play more of an obsessed detective in getting Neeson in this movie as the movie trailers seem to portray. Having Neeson and Whitaker matching wits in their various obsessions, with the police caught in the middle would have been great to see. I really wanted to see more of the police coordinating with each other a lot more in order to get Neeson rather than what was shown in the movie.

Click below to watch another movie trailer of Taken 3.



Rated PG-13 for violence and language. Running time: 109 Minutes.

Pancho
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THE LAST STAND

Lionsgate

Rated R

Running time: 107 Minutes



Click below to watch The Last Stand trailer.



In Lionsgate The Last Stand, Sheriff Arnold Swarzenegger must stop a FBI fugitive Eduardo Noriega from crossing the border through his small town.

In Arnold's first lead role since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Arnold is a small town sheriff looking forward to a nice quiet weekend after most of the town has gone out of town for the local high school's football game - when escaped drug lord Noriega heads toward his town in order to cross the border.

This is a good ol' boy version of Jack Reacher and Seven Samurai, but not as intelligent. Although, the characters were quite relatable, even the small town bit townspeople It is too bad that Harry Dean Stanton did not have more to do. He would have been a great town character. It is kind of nice that the movie played up the fact that as a character, Arnold has been out of action for a while and played up his being old. International drug lord Noriega was a character more interested in power than being an intelligent bad guy, and his henchman Peter Stormare is even worse and more over the top as a character. With Noriega driving a modified Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 as his escape car racing towards Arnold's small town and the Mexican border, the movie had a Mad Max type of feeling as well.

Forrest Whitaker is basically wasted in this movie as his character really was not very dramatic or kick ass as Noriega escapes from FBI custody in Las Vegas. It was also disappointing that Whitaker does not interact with Arnold and Arnold's people, except by phone - and that generally being about the legal jurisdiction between the two of them on their manhunt for Noriega. Johnny Knoxville and Luis Guzman were basically the film's eccentric comic relief.

Having the town shootout done with assault rifles instead of your typical six-shooter wild Western shootout was quite fun.

Rated R for graphic violence and language. Running time: 107 Minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews