Taken 3 (2014)

The dopiest moments in this appalling third movie of the Taken series include a scene in which a peach yoghurt drink plays a dubious role in ex-government operative Bryan Mills' intricate plot to reunite with his daughter; a scene involving a Russian gang leader who makes a money-exchange appointment, barking down a phone, "Meet me in an hour," and is then in the very next scene seen raunching it up in a spa with two bikini-clad women - you can imagine him hissing, "We need to be quick!" (and watch as the women vanish without trace when the appointment starts and guns start blazing); and any scene involving Forest Whitaker's helpful-unhelpful-helpful-unhelpful investigator who in place of purpose and personality sports a chess piece and an elastic band.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Fugitive (1993)

The 60s show, The Fugitive" stretched its story - Dr Richard Kimble flees from police after a one-armed man murders his wife - to 120 fifty-one minute tv episodes across four seasons screened between 1963 and 1967, whereas this 1993 movie adaptation compacts the story into just two hours and adds blockbuster flair in the form of a spectacular train crash, a river plunge, Tommy Lee Jones as the dogged but misguided detective, and everyone's favourite good-guy-in-distress, Harrison Ford as the fugitive.

★★★★☆

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Jason Bourne (2016)

The camera never stays still for more than a second so imagine watching an episode of The Amazing Race on The Zipper: the "contestants" are the most technologically-enabled but most bungling CIA team ever assembled for the franchise (and only them - there are zero outsiders in this world) and the "prize" they are vying for you might think is a personality because there isn't one between them nor one to be found at any of the "roadblocks" in Berlin, Greece, London or Las Vegas - now that Jason Bourne remembers everything, has his identity back and we all know his name, a personality seems to be the last missing thing.

★★☆☆☆

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Salt (2010)

It's every bit as exciting and fun as The Fugitive except that in the place of suspected wife-killer Dr Richard Kimble is Angelina Jolie's Evelyn Salt, a likeable woman married to an arachnologist, on the run from Government agents who believe her to be a Russian spy; under pressure she certainly appears to be as resourceful and as acrobatic as a Bourne operative - but an American or a Russian one?

★★★★☆

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Point Blank (A Bout Portant) (2010)

A medical intern becomes embroiled in a police chase when criminals abduct his wife as a means of coercing him into helping a wounded colleague escape from hospital, in this action thriller with a very unlikely plot but held together with a lead performance by a short French Liam Neeson.

★★★☆☆

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North By Northwest (1959)

This Hitchcock masterpiece has Cary Grant as debonair ad man Roger Thornhill embroiled in a case of mistaken identity and an international intrigue that sees him framed for murder, famously chased by a crop-duster, dangled from Mount Rushmore, and head-over-heels in love with an icy Eva Marie Saint.

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS