3 Days To Kill
Starring Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfeld
Directed by McG
As far as spy thrillers go, Kevin Costners 3 Days To Kill shows sporadic promise but eventually succumbs to some rather wacky tonal shifts.
Co-written by the eccentric Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Taken), the movie opens with some horribly awkward expository dialogue that quickly sets up villains referred to as The Wolf and The Albino, while establishing Ethan Renner (Costner) as a grizzled CIA veteran with a nasty cold. We soon find out he is dying of cancer. (Constant hacking in movies is usually a giveaway.) Renner is promptly offered one last job, in exchange for an experimental drug that could prolong his life, from a sultry agent played by the vacuously boring Amber Heard.
As if things arent complicated enough, Renner is also trying to patch things up with his estranged daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld, who, sadly, may never get a role as good as the Coens True Grit).
3 Days to Kill has the makings of a slick yarn but is hampered by bland action and is never sure of what kind of genre it wants to be. One moment Costner is brutally dispatching bad guys, then hes cracking wise with a prisoner in the trunk of his car, then hes teaching Zoey how to ride a bicycle its just all over the map.
Director McG (Terminator: Salvation, This Means War) seems to lack a genuine sense of confidence in the films execution you can almost feel the movie yearning to be better than it ever can be.
