With a car chase that’s as scintillating as a supermarket car park, the most exotic location a boondock desert gas station somewhere in California, and a narrative that is plodding, predictable and PG where it should be R, TAKEN 3 is a tired token of its progenitor and predecessor, toned down to an atonal, trite and tepid potboiler that evaporates before it bubbles.

Where the original film had glorious European locations, this third instalment is moribund in Malibu, and where there was a sense of urgency over the kidnapping of the daughter and sexual slave trade scenario, no such vim is vitalised here.

Screen writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, the scribes behind the Transporter franchise as well as the Taken trio, have simply exhausted the Boon Mills was, milked it dry and turned in a script that’s parched of sense or sensibility.

A robust and thrilling rescue mission has been jettisoned for a tiresome revenge plot, as Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills goes after the Russian scum who snuffed his ex-spouse, Lenore, a shameful waste of the fabulous Famke Janssen.

Taking template from The Fugitive, Mills is hunted by a relentless and resourceful policeman played by Forest Whitaker, who is saddled with a constabulary akin to the Keystone Cops in their asinine acumen of arresting and apprehending.

The real crook is not a central casting slobbering Slav, although the film is full of that stereotype, but Dougray Scott, the latest “go to” B film baddie. He’s the best thing in it.

Maggie Grace is back as Mills’ daughter, Kim, and a further instalment might be prompted by her pregnancy, getting grandad to guard the grandchild. Oh, puleeeze, no!

Let there be truth in advertising in the poster banner for TAKEN 3 – It Ends Here. TAKEN 4 would only be shorthand for Taken for Imbeciles: Audience.