Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Taken 3 is such a blatant paycheque gig for Liam Neeson, you almost expect him to stop midmovie to deposit his loot into an ATM.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The concept is lame, and the execution is lame, too. The more the film advances, the less we care about the plot - or anything that happens to anybody, really.

Name : Clarence Tsui / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Besson's team has signed off the trilogy with a whimper rather than the kind of unfettered bang delivered by the first two films.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
All kinds of problems are forgivable in a movie like this if the finished product is exciting. That doesn't happen here.

Name : Kyle Anderson / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
It's the weakest of the trilogy, but Taken 3 kicks just hard enough to survive another day.

Name : David Hiltbrand / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Nothing gets taken here except your ticket money.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
A movie that thinks the way to earn our knuckle-biting is to be as dull as hell for 35 minutes, then send a giant shipping container hurtling along the interstate. But you yawn through that, too.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Here it's the audience that gets taken.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Neeson's late-life rebirth as an action star may be drawing to a close with this limping, wheezing entry in the "Taken" franchise.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Megaton and editors Audrey Simonaud and Nicolas Trembasiewicz take every fist-fight, shoot-out and highway chase and shred them into milliseconds of mismatched visual information like something out of a latter-day Godard movie.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Taken 3 is exactly what one might anticipate from an unnecessary sequel in a mediocre franchise.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
'Taken 3' scores over its predecessor on almost every level: the stakes are higher, the LA locations are nicely photographed and, best of all, there's an actual plot, with twists and everything.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
All you need to know about Taken 3 is that Liam Neeson survives an explosive car crash - twice.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
If you've seen Taken or Taken 2, you've already been taken, and there's not much different here.

Name : Maggie Lee / Alias : Variety
The third and presumably final installment of the Liam Neeson action franchise is a mind-numbing, crash-bang misfire.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
Forest Whitaker turns in one of his sleepiest performances; no one else seems to be trying very hard either, yet director Olivier Megaton delivers some good chases, fist fights, and shots of Neeson looking glum.

Name : Nicolas Rapold / Alias : New York Times
The logy screenplay, by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, sags under head-clutchingly banal dramatic scenes. Only Mr. Neeson's appeal somehow survives unscathed, perhaps the most impressive stunt of all.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Be warned, sequel fanboys: This thing sucks! At 62, Neeson still has a glare that means badass. Nothing else makes a damn lick of sense. The only thing getting taken is the audience.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
​I'll tell you what got "Taken." A hundred and twelve minutes of my life got "Taken."

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Taken 3" is so unintentionally hilarious I couldn't help but wonder - do movie contracts carry a humiliation bonus clause these days?

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
If you love the other "Taken" movies, you will like this. But if you're determined to love it, you'll have to talk yourself into it - and even then, it might not work.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Because Mills' hyper-competence never seems exciting, it instead becomes giggle-inducing.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
There's no flare of strangeness or freshness here, just a pile of images and ideas stolen from smarter people's second-hand bin banged into each other for a numbingly dull 132 minutes.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Lacks a . sense of originality and urgency, undercut by overly familiar characterizations and dilatory pacing.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
With minimal plot development and far too much running around in dark corridors, The Scorch Trials has a poor story:filler ratio. And much of what happens is poorly thought-out.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
If it sounds like there isn't an original thought in The Scorch Trials' scripted head, you're right. But at least you won't be smacking yourself in the head trying to figure out what's going on.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Maze Runner's action, suspense and twists give movie fans of all ages a chance to embrace their inner on-the-run teenager.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
After an hour and a half of mechanical 10-minute action cycles that start with, "Maybe we're safe now, for the moment," and end with "Aaaah! Run!" the pattern gets as wearying as the level of emotional brutality.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The teen dystopian franchise continues to play rough, and now even rougher, with satisfying results.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Director Wes Ball's film is a mad dash from one place to the next, with little time in between for rest, recuperation or plot development.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
The latest 'Maze Runner' movie succeeds well enough as derivative survival-horror-action thrillers go, but makes for an unsatisfying, confusing sequel.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie may feel tonally consistent with the first, but it's also overlong and thoroughly routine.

Name : John Williams / Alias : New York Times
The many chases and ludicrous narrow escapes offer respectable doses of adrenaline.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
This story was better off back in the maze.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The material may be cardboard, but the actors do what they can.

Name : Andrew Parker / Alias : Globe and Mail
The sequel is terrible and all my original criticisms for the first film still stand, but at least it's a more entertaining kind of awful.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Yes, these "Trials" go on too long. But they're never dull, and the kids are always good company.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The Scorch Trials wanders between YA cliches - there's a Resistance, but it's unclear what they're resisting - and zombie movie tropes, with the obligatory a zombie bit our friend scene.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Essentially, The Scorch Trials makes up for the humdrum YApocalypse of its first half by going a little bonkers in its second.

Name : Michael Sragow / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The first "Maze Runner" film was a wilderness saga refitted with robotic monsters. "The Scorch Trials" is a "Mad Max" film on foot.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It's exhausting, yet emotionally unengaging.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
To wait a movie and a half for a big reveal and have it turn out to be a zombie plague is like waiting until March for your Christmas present, and it turning out to be a three-pack of white Hanes T-shirts.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Action overflows, some of it neatly staged but none of it telling us anything beyond "Go! Go! Go! Run! Run! Run!" Stay home, stay home.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
This time around, the kids have been turned into wind-up figures whose only function - taking the title a tad too literally - is to RUN!

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
The young leads lack charisma, and the veteran supporting players seem to be phoning it in.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
"Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" crams in more lore, supporting characters, backstories and motivations to the extent that it becomes difficult to get a grasp on anything.