movie review 3 days to kill

3 Days to Kill

"3 Days to Kill"

Director McG and producer Luc Besson just can’t drag Kevin Costner down to their level, try as they might. The “ This Means War ” helmer and the man responsible in some way or another for the “ Taken ,” “Transporter,” and “ Taxi ” movies plunk the aging action star into a fairly cynical live-action cartoon whose ostensible quirkiness has become its own form of cliché, and Costner responds by bringing an easy integrity and seemingly effortless humanity to his part. And hence making a messy, meandering and silly movie rather more watchable than it deserves to be.

From the get-go you know what kind of tripe “Kill” is: the overdetermined, overblown, overdesigned type—a EuroTrash action movie, if you will. One in which the explosions are almost as loud as the real-life kind that make people deaf, and the villain looks like he stepped out of a “Saturday Night Live” parody of a Prada advertisement. In the middle of the sound and fury of an opening battle, Costner is stolid and solid. Then his character learns that he’s got a virulent form of cancer, and only months to live. “The C.I.A. thanks you for your service,” his attending physician tells him. Right. Acting on advice to get his affairs in order, Costner’s character, who doesn’t speak a word of French, goes to his flat in Paris, discovers a family of Africans squatting there, tries to go all middle-period Eastwood on them, doesn’t, and then looks up his estranged wife and estranged teenage daughter.

“Promise me one thing,” estranged wife Connie Nielsen says. “Promise me you’re not working for them anymore.” Sure enough, Costner promises. And sure enough, Amber Heard , a mysterious presence in the opening scene, and made up throughout to look as if she just stepped out of a Tex Avery animated short, turns up offering to cure his cancer if he’ll, yes, work for “them” again, this time killing bad guys known as “The Wolf” and “The Albino.” His new assignment happens to coincide with a let’s-get-reacquainted period between father and daughter.

The upshot of which, at times, involves Costner’s character torturing various lower-level criminals while, get this, soliciting their advice on parenting. This is the main comic device of the movie’ scenario, and it’s a pretty uncomfortable one. This is one of those movies that’s ridiculously busy with dumb and not particularly pertinent detail on the one hand, and determined to beat all of its near-decent jokes into the ground on the other (as in what happens after Costner’s daughter sets Icona Pop’s “I Don’t Care” as his cell phone ringtone for her), so when it stops dead for a father-daughter bonding scene in front of Sacre Coeur, the effect is a little unsettling at first. As in, what the hell is this, “Die Hard” meets “Amelie”? Only, because “True Grit” girl Haille Steinfeld is easily winning as the daughter, and Costner is delivering his absolute best Gary Cooper stuff, the scene is actually almost affecting.

And so it goes throughout the ridiculous and thoroughly predictable action proceedings (when “The Wolf” says to an associate, “Take me to my partner’s house, he will know how to get me out of Paris,” you know exactly who the partner is going to turn out to be, even though you can’t believe it). Costner deserves better, and the fact that he doesn’t phone it in here indicates that he thinks maybe so do you. It’s worth noting, too, that the movie looks real nice; Thierry Arbogast , a long time Besson accomplice (he even worked with the man when he was doing good, as in “ The Fifth Element “) imbues the possibly overfamiliar Paris locations with a gold-sepia lighting that’s very pleasing.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Kevin Costner as Ethan Renner
• Amber Heard as Vivi Delay
• Hailee Steinfeld as Zoey Renner
• Richard Sammel as The Wolf
• Marc Andréoni as Mitat Yilmaz
• Connie Nielsen as Christine Renner
• Tómas Lemarquis as The Albino
• Eriq Ebouaney as Jules

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Down and Armed in Paris, Teenager in Tow

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By A.O. Scott

• Feb. 20, 2014

In the new movie “3 Days to Kill,” Paris is full of thugs for hire with bald heads and dark suits, and the last thing they want to see — in many cases the last thing they do see — is Kevin Costner, unshaven and in faded jeans, shuffling down the hallway in their direction. Sometimes these tough guys make fun of the fact that Mr. Costner’s character, Ethan Renner, is American, calling him “cowboy” and other hilarious names. The deeper joke, perhaps unintentional, is that Ethan looks more French than most of the Parisians he encounters. With his loosely tied scarf and graying stubble, his sunglasses and his world-weary demeanor, he could easily pass for a philosophy professor or the leader of a Serge Gainsbourg tribute band. If he spoke any French, that is.

But Ethan is a true-blue C.I.A. superassassin, and “3 Days to Kill” is un film de McG (mak-ZHAY) from the atelier of Luc Besson , a noted practitioner of le cinéma de l’absurde who serves this project as a screenwriter and producer. The idea seems to have been to explore how little sense a movie could make, and how little that could matter, and also to allow Mr. Costner to indulge in some good-natured sadism and a bit of middle-aged sentimentality. There is a lot of violence, but very few hard feelings, except between Ethan and his teenage daughter, Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld), who lives in Paris with her mother, Christine (Connie Nielsen), Ethan’s ex-wife.

There is a villain, too — a pair of them, actually, vaguely Germanic arms dealers known as the Wolf (Richard Sammel) and the Albino (Tómas Lemarquis) — but they are among the most irrelevant bad guys in the history of movies. Mr. Costner’s real nemesis is Liam Neeson , who has been the go-to globe-hopping wintertime action dad at least since “Taken.” (He’ll be back next week with “Non-Stop”). “3 Days to Kill” serves notice (as the latest, dreadful “Die Hard” sequel did last year) that there’s a new angry papa in town and offers a slight twist on the formula. Rather than placing the daughter in peril, it forces the protagonist to juggle parental responsibilities and professional duties. So Ethan will often be interrupted — say in the middle of torturing one of the Wolf’s associates with duct tape and a car battery — by the perky ringtone signaling that Zooey needs something.

Ethan is making up for lost time and racing with the clock. Apparently, his work messed up his marriage, and now he finds himself back in Paris with a terminal illness. Luckily, his boss — a United States-taxpayer-supported femme fatale named Vivi (Amber Heard), who has an impressive collection of fast cars, high-heeled shoes and wigs — has access to an experimental treatment. As long as Ethan keeps up with his assignments, she’ll be waiting with a giant syringe in an elegant velvet-lined case.

By any reasonable standard, “3 Days to Kill” is a terrible movie: incoherent, crudely brutal, dumbly retrograde in its geo- and gender politics. But it is also, as much because of as in spite of these failings, kind of fun. Mr. Costner does nothing he hasn’t done before: He slips into the gruff cynic-with-a-heart-of-gold persona that has been his default setting at least since “Bull Durham” and figures that will be enough. It almost is. There is nothing remotely believable about Ethan — as a father, an expatriate or, goodness knows, an agent of American policy — and yet when he studies the grooves on a vinyl phonograph record, or gives his daughter a belated bike-riding or just-in-time-for-prom dance lesson, or beats up the creeps who are assaulting her in the bathroom of a rave club, you may feel the stirrings of a familiar affection. This is a movie star, and even in a movie as ridiculous as this one that still counts for something.

“3 Days to Kill” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Father of the year kills and tortures bad guys.

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Review: ‘3 Days to Kill’ Starring Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfeld & Amber Heard

Drew taylor.

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French filmmaker Luc Besson used to make arty entertainments that came packaged with an element of exploitative sizzle (things like the endlessly remade “ La Femme Nikita ” and “ The Fifth Element ,” which was like a European comic book version of “ Star Wars “). At some point, though, his interest in directing faded, his personal output became sporadic and scattershot, and instead he refashioned himself as a kind of European Roger Corman , co-writing and producing a slew of trashy thrillers that had marginally more sheen and complexity than your average direct-to-cable premiere. “ 3 Days to Kill ” is the latest feature to emerge from the Besson hit factory, and is one of the filmmaker’s better productions, mostly because he seems to have found a kindred spirit in director McG , who has overseen a number of junky guilty pleasures himself.

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“3 Days to Kill” opens with a clandestine CIA mission that is staged clumsily, with a number of agents in pursuit of villains who were only vaguely set up (they’re terrorists, of course, and in possession of some pretty nasty explosives). The operation is led by Ethan Renner ( Kevin Costner ), a grumbly old fuck who is cocooned inside a wooly pea coat and looking physically taxed, both when firing his gun at an assortment of bad guys and when trying to make a phone call to his young daughter (it’s her birthday and he is, of course, missing it). The bad guys escape and Renner collapses. Turns out that he’s terminally ill, leaving him only… You guessed it… Very little time to live. Not exactly three days. But close enough.

So instead of continuing on the mission, Renner hightails it back to his crummy apartment in France, which has since been overrun by illegal squatters. In a burst of weird social commentary, the police inform Renner that the squatters are protected under French law and that he’s got to deal with it. Instead of try and kill them all, they live peacefully, while he attempts to reconnect with his teenage daughter ( Hailee Steinfeld ) and his estranged wife ( Connie Nielsen ). Things, however, are not as easy as they seem.

A mysterious, sexy operative named Vivi ( Amber Heard ) visits Renner and informs him that she has come into possession of a new, wholly untested experimental drug that could stop his cancer. The rub is that he has to finish the mission that he started before the opening credits. For every bad guy that he summarily exterminates, she will give him a shot of this drug (which is basically a magic serum). If he doesn’t agree, then she’ll allow him to die. And before he has a chance to warm up to his sullen teenage daughter, at that.

The “magic serum” element of the movie lends “3 Days to Kill” the vibe of John Carpenter ‘s “ Escape from New York ” (and the “ Crank ” movies starring Jason Statham ), and McG, a stylist capable of much more than he showcases here (or in his last directorial effort, the genuinely miserable Fox action comedy “ This Means War “), has some fun with the hallucinogenic effects of the drug. It also means that the movie is split evenly between sequences where Costner is running down bad guys and murdering them horribly, and scenes where the cold blooded killer warm-heartedly teaches his daughter how to ride a bicycle ( finally ). “ True Lies ” seems to be the clear template, at least as far as Besson and co-writer Adi Hasak ‘s script is concerned, although there is a whole bunch of Besson’s own “ Taken ” in the mix as well, particularly during a sequence where Costner rescues his young daughter from a potential gang rape situation at a local Parisian nightclub. And for the most part, it works.

McG was responsible for the supremely underrated, visually adventurous “ Charlie’s Angels ” movie and the zeitgeist-capturing Fox drama “ The O.C. ,” and you can feel elements of both in “3 Days to Kill.” There are moments which are deliciously cartoony and over-the-top, like when Heard coos to Costner that he needs to wear a suit because, “I like my boys dressed better than the men we kill.” And there are a handful of instances when the relationship between Costner and Steinfeld feels genuine, even sincere. You just wish that he would have been able to let loose a little bit more, both in terms of the movie’s stylized visuals and the appropriate levels of sex and violence (there was, undoubtedly, a more supercharged European cut that was denied American exhibition because it would have endangered the movie’s precious PG-13 rating). With McG more is always more, so to feel him somewhat hedged in by the movie’s limited budget and production values is something of a disappointment.

What’s not disappointing, however, is getting to watch Costner play in a way that he hasn’t in years . It’s always great to see the actor pop up, even when it’s in meaningless fluff like “ Man of Steel ” or last month’s “ Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit .” Here, though, we are allowed to luxuriate in his presence, and McG is unafraid of filling the frame almost exclusively with Costner’s face. You can trace the actor’s wrinkles, like spider webs, from behind his ear and around his eyes; for all the trouble he got in during the late nineties for ego-driven projects like “ The Postman ,” he seems completely free nowadays. This is Costner, unadorned. And it’s pretty brilliant. “3 Days to Kill” is the perfect project for the actor, because it allows him to showcase his action movie chops while also displaying his penchant for physical comedy, something that he rarely gets to engage with. Yes, he gets to shoot a bunch of people, which is plenty exciting. But the sequence where he intimidates his daughter’s French boyfriend is even better.

Ultimately, “3 Days to Kill” doesn’t add up to much. But it is fun while it lasts (which, thanks to its unnecessarily lengthy running time, is longer than you’d expect). McG and Besson are perfect collaborators, men finely attuned to what makes throwaway entertainment really pop . They both understand that characterizations, no matter how broad, and peppy action sequences, both utilized for maximum emotional impact, are what really matter, no matter how messy and inelegant they might be. “3 Days to Kill” might not be art, but it’s better than most of the overtly violent action fare that litters the multiplexes these days, thanks largely to the fact that its heart is almost as big as its explosions. [B-]  

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3 Days to Kill Reviews

A mediocre action picture that never anchors itself enough to tell a competent story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 25, 2022

That the CIA has a quick-acting cure for cancer is only the fifth or sixth most implausible thing in this movie.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Sep 9, 2021

Costner has a world weary, easy charm here that helps sell the humor and he appears comfortable with the action.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2021

Ranges from clichéd characters and vacuous dialogue to an inconsistent tone and mismatched antics.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Dec 4, 2020

For moviegoers craving a couple hours of good old-fashioned mindless action this should definitely do the job.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 24, 2020

No movie can be this bizarre, disjointed, and terrible without it being on purpose, right? Every leaves you scratching your head, wondering what the hell everyone involved was thinking.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 8, 2020

Nothing warms my heart more than a father-daughter film - unless it's a father-daughter film with kick-ass action; which means, 3 Days To Kill is killer!

Full Review | Jan 8, 2020

Some nifty action sequences and serviceable editing can only mask the indecisive aura of a confused narrative for so long.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 29, 2019

3 Days to Kill really cares about its parental themes, with neurotic and bizarre results.

Full Review | Aug 28, 2019

My least favorite actor is back, and he's looking to make up for lost time in the "things that suck" department. And sweet tap-dancing Moses does 3 Days to Kill suck.

Full Review | Original Score: F | Aug 6, 2019

A McG film... based on a story by Luc Besson. So why isn't it more enjoyable?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 14, 2019

3 Days to Kill has plenty to offer and has more than enough going for it to engage the interest if you have a couple of hours to kill.

Full Review | Mar 5, 2019

As a flat and fledgling spy vehicle, 3 Days To Kill could not die soon enough.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 11, 2018

In the end, you'll be left with a movie that you wish you could like more than you do. And then you'll forget about it.

Full Review | Nov 21, 2017

Lighthearted while managing to mix a torture scene with a recipe for spaghetti sauce, the film's myriad elements come together with a deft touch, without losing the plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 15, 2017

The film itself is a tone-deaf, awkward mess that is miles below the actor's maligned bombs like Waterworld and The Postman.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jun 21, 2016

( ... ) a mindlessly entertaining, disjointed, frequently unbelievable hell-for-leather action adventure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2014

Fine, in a mid-budget, wholly inconsequential way.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2014

3 Days to Kill is a frequently bizarre, never boring mash-up that doesn't come together yet perfectly encapsulates everything both good and bad about Luc Besson's recent output

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 25, 2014

French filmmaker Luc Besson continues to combine family themes with intense violence (see Taken), but at least this film has a wry sense of humour about it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 24, 2014

3 Days To Kill

The beginning of the surprisingly pleasant 3 Days To Kill is the sort of typically-obnoxious blast of violence that most films feel the need to force onto audiences to jolt them out of their seats.

After that brief ballet into brutality, however, McG's Parisian-set thriller launches into its opening credits. Running contrary to the body count, Ann Peebles' gorgeous, downbeat "Trouble, Heartaches And Sadness" scores a quiet backseat ride by disaffected spy Ethan Renner, an appealingly aging Kevin Costner .

Like the film’s best sequences, this is a modest departure from the cacophonous slapstick-fest we’ve been promised by the film’s ad campaign, instead languishing within Costner’s old-school charisma and weathered charm. With the bullets and the decapitations of the first few minutes out of the way, the picture settles into a sense of confidence, one overseen by the sparse opening credits, skipping over nearly all technical credits to rush to Directed By McG . Even the influence of writer and superproducer Luc Besson can’t sway this: unquestionably, this is McG’s movie.

Costner’s Renner, a field agent who has seen too many corpses, is an appealing reject from the opening credits onwards. Dressed like an unassuming Dad, Costner resembles a treasured sweater balled up in the corner of your room. Familiar, neglected, yet dependable. This is one super-agent that isn’t necessarily getting “too old for this shit.” Instead, he’s developed a brain tumor that’s given him only months to live.

As regret sets in, he returns to France to reunite with his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen) and hormonal teenage daughter ( Hailee Steinfeld ). But a mysterious CIA operative named Vivi ( Amber Heard ), seemingly materializing out of thin air, offers him an experimental chemical cocktail that can keep him alive, as long as he completes the botched mission at the film’s start, chasing a Euroscum terrorist who goes by the name The Albino, and who now hides among the French.

Not much of the plot makes any sense. Why recruit Renner when Heard’s mysterious and well-armed Vivi seems to constantly be within walking distance of all the film’s action sequences? Heard, like Nielsen and Steinfeld, keeps weaving in and out of the film whenever she’s needed, never providing an actual distraction from Ethan’s spy work. The constant but non-obtrusive inclusion of old home movies within the narrative just serve to further skew that time is an amorphous concept at the heart of the film. The three days are in the title, but the movie might as well take place over 10. Renner’s condition further clouds matters, as he slips in and out of consciousness freely: considering the name of the film, this picture offers almost no immediacy whatsoever. Even The Albino is simply being pursued not because of his nefarious plans, but because he’s merely hanging out, waiting to “do villainy.”

This works because director McG has finally stopped caring what other people think of him. No studio filmmaker has been more desperate to be liked than the man who brought us two candy-colored Charlie’s Angels movies. His career reached a nadir with would-be blockbuster Terminator: Salvation , where he ditched his bright pop-art savvy by attempting to ape the aesthetic of war-torn villages. It came across as a Neiman Marcus Apocalypse of immaculate shanties and excessive scarves.

The director tried to make a complete reversal with his last film, This Means War , but watching that film was like walking down an aisle at Target where there’s nothing you can imagine buying. His superficiality has always been a gift: here it manifests in the film’s pervasive movie-ness. Despite leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, you still register hope that Renner can heed everyone’s advice and slide into a nice suit at some point.

Part of that comes from Costner, the greatest movie star that McG has worked with thus far. No actor of his generation has looked more comfortable in front of a camera quite like the aging, sleepy-eyed lothario. The camera pans across his wrinkles the way your fingertips would glide across leather. Nielsen, who herself still looks magnificent as well, doesn’t have much of a character to play. But when she and Costner lock eyes, it’s magnetic. McG is very clearly leering when she strips to her nightgown. It doesn’t matter: you only notice Costner’s wolfish stare, and undo your top button. Heard doesn’t generate the same chemistry, but she’s one of the few actresses in Hollywood who can come across like she’s trying too hard and still radiate intense eroticism.

As a part of the same commercial- and music-video-brat world that produced David Fincher and Jonathan Glazer, McG still lacks the attention span to assemble a complete movie. The edits to trim this to a PG-13 are sloppy, and the picture’s final 10 minutes are complete nonsensical gibberish.

McG is a pop filmmaker, if ultimately not a nuanced one. But he excels with broad gestures. When Renner’s daughter alters his IPhone to play Icona Pop’s I Love It when she calls, it is a touching cultural exchange between two people struggling to find common ground. And a sequence where a mildly optimistic Renner follows up a father-daughter conversation with a bike ride across Paris is transcendent. The Movie Star was thought dead because The Filmmakers tried to kill them, trapping them within a sea of edits, massive over-coverage, and special effects. But when McG examines Costner’s worriless face as he casually pedals across Paris, smirking and letting the moment wash over him, it suggests that death was premature.

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