Starring: Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld
Veteran CIA agent Ethan Renner (Costner) discovers he has terminal brain cancer following an assignment in Belgrade. Now in Paris, home of his wife (Connie Neilsen) and daughter (Steinfeld) and facing only weeks left to live, Ethan is given an experimental treatment by a fellow agent (Heard), prolonging his life enough for him to track down his assignment in Belgrade known as "The Albino" (Tómas Lemarquis) and his boss, "The Wolf" (Richard Sammell).
3 Days To Kill was a film whose origins can be traced back to director Luc Besson and the Besson-isms are fairly clear. A slick crime thriller set against the streets of Paris, owing a debt to Chinese "gun fu" cinema whilst also juggling a drama about a mam and his relationship with his teenage daughter (in fact, Hailee Steinfeld even makes herself up at one point in a fashion eerily recalling a young Natalie Portman in the obvious Besson comparison, Léon (The Professional))
But the finished work is not that of Luc Besson. Instead it has fallen to the eccentrically-monikered McG, music video director who made his feature debut with 2000's Charlie's Angels. As a director, Luc Besson is polarising ; with his films both being loved and hated in equal measure. McG is not the worst film-maker of all time but his style is comparable to another filmmaker born of the music video, Michael Bay. Into this film that balances spy thriller with family drama, McG injects high-paced editing and an action sensibility that borders on the absurd. The result is a film with plot holes like swiss cheese and where understatement is a sledgehammer to the gonads.
It's clear from early on that McG really doesn't care about giving his audience a realistic story. Whilst 3 Days To Kill does avert the gimmick-laden over-the-top action of the more fanciful (and very often worst) James Bond films the film takes a lot of artistic license with what an audience believes. This is typified with Amber Heard's portrayal of Vivi, leading man Costner's CIA associate who, whilst undoubtedly spirited, serves mostly to show Heard off like part of the hardware herself as she constantly makes vain comments to emphasise her role as eye candy. I wouldn't go so far as to call the character sexist, I would go so far as to say wearing extremely conspicuous hairpieces and unusual and sexualised clothing would not be to your advantage if you were a spy looking to hide in the shadows.
As for Costner as Ethan Renner, he's given a role that despite having ample meat on the bones to act with but is mostly relegated to playing the same middle-aged secret agent with a family that Liam Neeson is also making his living with these days. It's the film's disregard for Renner's illness that does the film a disservice. What is clearly set up as a means for gathering tension and uncertainty is often pushed aside so as not be an element at all. Really, the film only needed to back up him trying to re-establishing a relationship with his daughter to provide an original plot point even if that is handled clumsily (a supposedly sweet scene of him teaching her to dance has perhaps the creepiest accompanying music that you could slip in without intention to freak out an audience).
Along with the film's worryingly cruel sense of humour, this seems pretty terrible. To be fair, it is a handsome film and the cast is made up of enough talent to make it worth watching and fairly engaging in parts. I doubt McG intends his films to be cerebral exercises where he expects his audience to think about the film's message and that's fine. Raiders Of The Lost Ark doesn't really have a message, it's just fun. Here, keep thought to a minimum because if you even for a second start to question film, it falls away leaving something disappointingly empty.
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