There are good films, bad films and some plain ridiculous ones. And then there is a critic-proof phenomena like Fast and Furious franchise which fuses all of the above and comes up with a brand all its own.

This one is a blockbuster with smack-you-in-your-face set pieces, death-defying stunts, muscle cars, family-first ethos, ridiculous one-liners which get all the taalis and an apology of a plot.

The film borrows heavily from RoboCop and AI Artificial Intelligence but lacks that touch which made these films human and real. In one word, what the film lacks is heart.

It is down to director Matthew Vaughan (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) that the film has that deranged yet boisterous quality about it. However, this one’s only for those who can stomach unimaginable quantities of violence. The rest, like Valentine, need to look the other way.

… grand when it comes to scale and production values. The clothes are grand enough and so are the mansions and castles where it has been filmed. It is a pity then that it also has to be so boring.

Even though the film is about a fulfilling marriage that finally fails, it never degenerates into negativity. The underlying message is that of hope, as put in words by the physicist himself, “While there is life, there is hope.” We will toast to that.

The only redeeming factor of Taken 3 is that it is supposed to be the last film of the franchise. We are sure Neeson can do something vastly superior with his time.

It is a visual spectacle minus a heart…

The greedy suits have gone ahead and wrecked our cinematic experience once again. Where we could have had a cracker of an end to the Hunger Games franchise, what we get is half a novel, which, as expected, has more pauses than action, more waiting than doing.

An ‘A’ film this is not but if some good old action is what you are looking for, this is your manna from heaven. Just leave your thinking caps behind.

Despite the complaints, this is one intergalactic trip the audience needs to take. It may not match up to those touchstones of sci-fi cinema – Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey but it finds its place in pantheon of films which dare to dream.