The term "nominative determinism" is used when your name implies your job or your personality, like a dentist named Harry Smiles or a firefighter named Willie Burn.

Frenchman Olivier Megaton is the director of this latest instalment in the surprisingly successful Taken franchise and his name falls under this category, a preview of his no-holds-barred approach to the action thriller genre.

While this film doesn't enjoy the frenetic pacing of his earlier Colombiana, thriller fans looking for a bit of brainless biff will lap it up.

Liam Neeson once again slips into the role that gave him a career resurgence in 2008 as Bryan Mills, a former CIA hardman whose daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) in the first Taken film and wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) in the 2012 sequel get kidnapped by Albanian underworld types who don't realise Mills is a one-man apocalypse.

This time around (the poster says "it ends here" if you care to believe such things), Mills is paid a visit from his ex-wife but the visit turns sour when she is stabbed to death in his apartment, the police beating on the door.

Suspected of her murder, Mills goes underground and we know from the previous two films nothing is going to get in the way of him working out who did it, tracking them down and then, to paraphrase Samuel L Jackson, killing every motherlover in the room.

In addition to the Russian Mafia types responsible, Mills' opponent is the Los Angeles Police Inspector Frank Dotzler (Forest Whitaker) heading the manhunt for him, while adding to the complications is the safety of daughter Kim and her step-dad Stuart (Dougray Scott).

In their screenplay, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen raise the stakes with Mills keeping many balls in the air at once, offering more in the way of plot but recycling much in the way of dialogue and characterisation.

As with the previous two outings the film's primary enjoyment comes from the eventual smackdowns Neeson will deliver and these will be difficult to watch for those who can't stomach gut-churning handicam or epilepsy-inducing editing.

Incidentally, if you're hiring the original Taken on DVD, have a look for Canberra boy Antonio Gambale in the credits, now living in Paris and working as a musician and sound technician.