- "First, he gets me to kill your wife, then you. And when that doesn't work, he pushes you to kill me, no? Either way, he wins. Your wife. was just part of a business deal, like many before her. It is my turn to lose the game. Finish me. Finish me. I deserve it."
- ―Oleg Malankov's last words to Bryan Mills.
Oleg Malankov is the secondary antagonist in the 2014 film, Taken 3. He is a powerful Russian crime lord/terrorist leader and a former Spetsnaz veteran of Afghan war who was secretly hired by American billionaire Stuart St. John to kill his ex-wife, Lenore after failing to get back the relationship.
He is portrayed by Sam Spruell.
Biography[]
After Bryan Mills finds out about Stuart St. John's true colors, he tells him that he had hired Oleg Malankov to kill Lenore. He adds in his things, saying Malankov was a senior KGB Spetsnav and an Afghanistan war veteran in his past, whose through the years, he became into an extremely powerful multi-millionaire crime boss after the fall of Soviet Union taking everything he can for himself, killing compititors, and has vast control over the Russian mob.
At the beginning of the film, Malankov sends several henchmen to kidnap a wealthy businessman on his estate before taking him to the place where he is working and where the businessman meets Malankov himself. When the Russian crime boss asks from the businessman to open the safe of his own boss for Malankov will take his money, his henchman Maxim sees that all of the money is gone. After speaking to his secret employer regarding a debt, Malankov orders to Maxim give him his own gun and shoots his hostage dead.
Malankov is not seen again until the climax, where he is relaxing on a beach. He arranges to meet Stuart downtown, but instead proceeds to flirt with two women in the pool. When Bryan enters the building, Malankov engages him in a shootout in which the gangster gains the upper hand and beats him some more. Malankov points his gun at him as he is about to shoot him, but Bryan grabs him by the leg, takes his gun from him, and shoots the suspect, mortally wounding him. As he dies, Malankov reveals that the whole thing was a setup, and that Stuart had played them against one another, saying that we were ruined by the same man as he dies from his injuries.
Personality[]
Malankov was an intelligent and sophisticated man but at the same time he was a megalomaniacal, greedy, and violent mob leader from the most diabolical kind ever imagined.
Trivia[]
- Despite only having all of ten minutes of screen-time, Malankov is the central antagonist in the film because his killing Lenore is what kicked off the entire plot in the first place, and Stuart's true nature wasn't revealed until the very end.