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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 .

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3 Days to Kill (2014)

Rated PG-13

113 minutes

Kevin Costner as Ethan Renner

Amber Heard as Vivi Delay

Hailee Steinfeld as Zoey Renner

Connie Nielsen as Christine Renner

Richard Sammel as The Wolf

Tómas Lemarquis as The Albino

Marc Andréoni as Mitat Yilmaz

Eriq Ebouaney as Jules

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3 days to kill: film review.

This comic spy thriller stars Kevin Costner as a dying CIA agent who is recruited for one last mission.

By THR Staff

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Yet another member of the AARP generation of action movie stars returns to show us how it’s done in 3 Days to Kill , marking Kevin Costner ‘s first big-screen leading role in many a moon. Playing Ethan, a dying CIA agent enticed to go on one last mission by the promise of an experimental drug that could prolong his life, the veteran actor effortlessly exudes the cool charisma, here tinged with a comic world-weariness, that reminds us why he became a star in the first place.

It’s a good thing the film has him, because this comic spy thriller is such a preposterous mashup of action, humor and sentimentality that it desperately needs his anchoring presence. Based on a story by Luc Besson , who also co-scripted, its main plot element is not Ethan’s perfunctory assignment to kill a eurotrash villain but rather his intense desire to reconnect with his long estranged wife, Christine ( Connie Nielsen ), and teenage daughter, Zoey ( Hailee Steinfeld ). Cue a running gag in which every time Ethan is about to, say, torture a bad guy, he’s interrupted by a phone call from Zoey signaled by her personal ring tone, the Icona Pop song “I Love It (I Don’t Care).”

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3 Days to Kill review – Kevin Costner dances with Parisian pulp

I magine restyling Ken Barlow after Jack Bauer. The latest slapdash pulp-dollop off the Luc Besson production line seeks to reposition Kevin Costner as a Neesony badass dad, casting him as a growly CIA type using a Parisian layover to juggle terrorist-offing with teaching daughter Hailee Steinfeld how to ride a bike. Director McG, a refugee from Hollywood's pre-Crunch more-is-more moment, realises the rating allows limited sadism, and pads it with irksome character business; Amber Heard brings scant nuance to the role of Cleavage With Integral Handgun; while Besson's staggeringly insensitive handling of other cultures persists around the populous Malian clan swarming Costner's apartment. Merde .

3 Days to Kill
Kevin Costner
Action and adventure films
Hailee Steinfeld

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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

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DVD & Streaming

3 Days to Kill

Action/Adventure , Comedy , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

February 21, 2014
Kevin Costner as Ethan Renner; Amber Heard as Vivi Delay; Hailee Steinfeld as Zoey Renner; Connie Nielsen as Christine Renner; Tómas Lemarquis as The Albino; Richard Sammel as The Wolf; Marc Andréoni as Mitat Yilmaz

Home Release Date

May 20, 2014

Distributor

Relativity Media

Movie Review

Work can be such a killer.

Take Ethan Renner’s job, for example. He’s a pretty great employee, sure—one of the best. For 32 years, he’s worked diligently for the CIA and has shown a talent for making a (quite literal) killing. Oh, he’s not the cleanest of employees: He leaves some of his job sites littered with bodies. But he’s exactly what the CIA looks for in a covert assassin—and he’s never taken a sick day in his life.

But it’s not exactly a 9-to-5 job, and all the late-night emergencies and occasional bullet wounds have taken a toll on Ethan’s family life. His wife barely speaks to him. And he does little more than call his teen daughter, Zoey, every year on her birthday. Frankly, he has a better relationship with his gun.

Then, after a mission goes awry, Ethan gets some very grave news. He has terminal cancer, he’s told, and just three months to live. Five, if he’s lucky.

Impending death has a way of putting your priorities in order. And while Ethan’s been on a first-name basis with death for a while now, this is different. All the years he spent on the job suddenly seem less rewarding somehow, and he heads to Paris to see his wife and kid—to patch things up as best he can. Whatever time he has left, Ethan wants to spend it with them.

Before he can get to work a-patching, though, he’s approached by a beautiful and ruthless CIA operative, Vivi, who has one more job for him to do. She wants him to take out notoriously evil weapons dealer Wolfgang Braun—aka The Wolf—and his cadre of collaborators. The carrot? An experimental drug that could prolong Ethan’s rapidly dwindling life.

“The question is—kill or die?” Vivi says.

Decisions, decisions …

Positive Elements

Ethan is not a good guy. He knows it. We know it. The movie even knows it. But at least he kinda wants to be a good guy. A good husband and father, for starters. And it’s that odd dichotomy between his roles as governmental assassin and struggling dad that 3 Days to Kill wants to poke and prod a bit.

When Ethan interrogates the bad guys, for instance, he’s more interested in asking for fatherly advice than shocking out evil secrets. And he never fails to pick up one of Zoey’s calls—even if he’s in the middle of a job. If he’s about to kidnap someone, the baddie just has to wait when Zoey calls up and asks to spend a little time with her dad.

And how does Ethan spend that time with Zoey? He teaches her how to dance and ride a bike. He consoles her when her hair misbehaves. And when she sneaks out of the house to go clubbing, he rescues her from trouble and even bothers to reprimand her for disobeying him. He’s trying to make up for lost time, and though Zoey’s a hard sell (after so many years of neglect, how could she not be?), Ethan works to win her over. When wife Christine sees how hard he’s trying, she finds herself softening toward her estranged hubby as well.

The movie doesn’t suggest it’s easy to reunite after so much time and hurt. This is a long and sometimes painful process, and it doesn’t end when 3 Days does. But everyone involved believes it’s worth the bother.

Ethan also finds the time to shelter a family of squatters who’ve taken over his Parisian flat. Though their presence adds a new level of discomfort to his job requirements (it’s difficult, for instance, to interrogate someone in the bathroom with little ones in the living room), they eventually reach an understanding. And when the woman gives birth to a new baby, they name her after Ethan.

Spiritual Elements

A question is asked about whether someone is a Muslim.

Sexual Content

Vivi comes across as less CIA operative than Bond girl. She dresses provocatively, flirts with Ethan constantly and in one scene holds court in a “high-class” strip club, where two topless dancers (critical body parts obscured by fog or obstructions) make out with each other.

Vivi lets Ethan see up her dress when he’s very sick. He responds with, “Am I in hell?” And he rejects all of Vivi’s advances, still very much in love with his wife. We later see him kiss Christine passionately; there’s an implication that they sleep together again.

While clubbing, Zoey’s forced into a men’s restroom and surrounded by three guys who suggestively/forcibly touch her leg and the bottom of her skimpy, shoulder-baring dress. (She’s saved when her father barges in and starts banging heads.) In another scene, Zoey and her older boyfriend kiss. (We can infer that the two of them might be having sex.)

We see others kiss and make out in a sleazy-looking tattoo parlor. And a naked woman is shown getting a tattoo. (We see her back and part of her backside.)

Somebody cracks a Brokeback Mountain joke.

Violent Content

Ethan’s called into the principal’s office after Zoey slugs a classmate. “No matter what she has to contend with in life,” the principal tells them, “violence is not an acceptable answer.”

Well. When they get in his car afterward, Ethan tells his daughter he’s proud of her for physically standing up for her friend, and he gives her advice on how to better sock someone. Because in Ethan’s line of work, violence is always an acceptable answer.

Need proof? Driving a car, Ethan smashes into another to send it flying off a bridge. (People stagger away or are pulled to safety.) He seems to have a thing for feet, too. He shoots one guy in the foot and stabs another there. He tortures people by ripping duct tape off their bodies and connecting their ear lobes to auto batteries. He stuffs folks in the back of a car (sometimes punching them if they get too loud) and tapes them to things in his bathroom.

Cars crash. A hotel explodes. Shootouts send bystanders running in panic, as do chaotic car chases. An unconscious unfortunate is dragged to an elevator shaft and left to have her head crushed by an oncoming elevator car. Another person is seriously wounded when the elevator he’s riding crashes down to the bottom of the shaft. Still another is thrown in front of a speeding metro train. People are beaten badly, tossed into bathroom and kitchen fixtures (leaving them unconscious), pulled from automobiles and heaved off building tops.

People often bear the residue of injury, be they bruises or streaks of blood on their faces. Ethan’s cancer medicine is administered via huge hypodermic needle, which we see getting jabbed into his arm. He sometimes bleeds from his nose, staggers around and faints, either because of his cancer or the medicine. (Inconveniently, such episodes always seem to strike when he’s running after someone.)

Crude or Profane Language

Two f-words (along with a few more that are suggested and/or nearly uttered), a half-dozen or more s-words and a handful of other bad words, including “a‑‑,” “b‑‑ch,” “d‑‑n” and “h‑‑‑.” God’s name is misused nearly 10 times (once with the aforementioned “d‑‑n”), and Jesus’ name is abused four or five times. Ethan calls some bad guys “turds.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Ethan’s medication makes him hallucinate and freak out, particularly when his heart rate is accelerated—side effects that Vivi says can be combatted with shots of vodka. We see Ethan drink straight from the bottle in Christine’s flat before he finds himself a glass, and again guzzles from a bottle at a club. He and others drink wine and champagne.

Vivi smokes cigarettes. It’s suggested that Zoey was drugged at the club.

Other Negative Elements

Zoey admits that she lies a lot, and we see her do it. Like father, like daughter, it would seem, since Ethan also keeps his share of secrets—not telling Zoey that he’s sick, and not confessing to his wife that he’s still working for the CIA (a job she desperately wants him to quit).

As Ethan tries to become a better man in the short time he has left, he realizes that promises are important and the time spent with loved ones even more so. We do see growth in the guy, and that’s great.

As 3 Days to Kill tries to become a better movie, we can see the effort it makes to keep its curious comedy thriller self at a PG-13 rating. We hear two f-words (instead of, say, 20), we see near-nudity (instead of full), we see unremitting violence and a somewhat stylized high body count (instead of graphic gore).

But the film has more the heart of the pretty-but-ruthless Vivi than the wanna-be-better Ethan. This is a slick, chilly, sometimes nonsensical diversion, meant to pepper audiences with action and violence and sensuality. And it makes no apologies for that. When a snooty principal voices her belief that real-life violence can be influenced by “violent images in popular culture,” it doesn’t read like a sincere speculation. It feels like a dig at those of us who believe just that.

No one’s saying 3 Days to Kill will alone inspire someone to be an assassin or thug, of course. Just that there are far better ways to kill a little time.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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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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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.

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Film Review: ‘3 Days to Kill’

Luc Besson recruits McG and Kevin Costner for a fatally compromised tale of an American spy in Paris.

By Geoff Berkshire

Geoff Berkshire

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'3 Days to Kill' Review: Kevin Costner Not Quite Liam Neeson

Even international spies have trouble balancing work and family life, according to “ 3 Days to Kill ,” the latest lightweight action pic from writer-producer Luc Besson , here forming an unlikely (or perhaps unholy) trinity with director McG and star Kevin Costner . Surely the goal of the resulting tonal mishmash was to reignite Costner’s career a la what happened for Liam Neeson after Besson’s “Taken,” but any possibility of sleeper-hit status has been fatally compromised by watered-down fight scenes and misguided family man dramatics. Three days of decent box office appears the best hope for this Relativity release, likely to continue EuropaCorp’s recent run of non-“Taken” commercial disappointments in the U.S. International prospects look only moderately livelier.

The setup plays as if someone (presumably Besson, who is credited with the story and co-wrote the script with “From Paris With Love” scribe Adi Hasak) decided to graft the central father/daughter relationship from “The Descendants” onto a Eurotrashy action framework. Superstar CIA field agent Ethan Renner (Costner) spends so much time on the job that he’s completely missed watching his daughter, Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld), blossom into a sophisticated teenager. After he’s diagnosed with a fatal illness, Ethan retires and resolves to spend more time with his family in Paris, offering to watch Zooey for a weekend while his estranged wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen), is away. But retirement isn’t so easy for a man of Ethan’s skills, and he’s promptly recruited by the mysterious Vivi (Amber Heard), who needs his help in the hunt for a terrorist mastermind in exchange for experimental drugs that could give Ethan a second lease on life.

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As it is, the lukewarm family dynamics sit awkwardly alongside equally underwhelming action sequences. Recent supporting turns in “Man of Steel” and “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” aside, Costner isn’t generally associated with the action genre — he’s more of a “Waterworld”/”Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” epic-adventure guy — and the rote heroics he undertakes here won’t do much to change that. On multiple occasions, the audience simply witnesses the aftermath of Ethan’s handiwork as repped by bodies lying motionless on the floor. The notable exceptions arrive in a brief but slickly executed one-on-one skirmish in a grocery store’s deli section (complete with resourceful use of the meat grinder and panini press) and a bracingly staged car chase in the middle of a Parisian neighborhood inspired by Claude Lelouch’s “Rendezvous” and John Frankenheimer’s “Ronin.”

That chase makes a lovely pairing with McG’s other standout sequence: a montage of Ethan riding the bike he bought for Zooey through the city streets and parking near the Eiffel Tower. It’s a sweet divertissement for the typically boisterous director, who overall reins in the bombastic giddiness of his “Charlie’s Angels” pictures and abandons the soulless spectacle of “Terminator: Salvation” to make an action film that’s downright restrained by his standards. Unfortunately, in this case the restraint reads as overly safe. “3 Days to Kill” is quite literally bloodless — the fight sequences in “Taken” packed a far more potent punch even with the same PG-13 rating — which seems like a missed opportunity. The juxtaposition of Ethan’s violent work and gentler paternal side might have added some desperately needed intrigue to the banal story.

The filmmakers certainly don’t find any of the intended mystery in Ethan’s fitful encounters with the femme-fatale-ish Vivi, a severely under-realized character who never makes any sense despite Heard’s arduous efforts to vamp it up. Nielsen’s thankless skeptical spouse role is even less significant, while Tomas Lemarquis and Richard Sammel bring nothing beyond menacing visages to their bland terrorist baddies. It’s a running gag that Ethan seeks parenting advice from just about anyone he encounters, which offers decent moments for character actors Eriq Ebouaney as the African paterfamilias in a family squatting in Ethan’s semi-abandoned apartment, and Marc Andreoni as a Middle Eastern limo driver linked to the villains.

Although the film’s tech package is reliably proficient, one would have hoped for more onscreen fireworks from the union of ultra-American McG and Costner with French mainstay Besson. Alas, this European vacation is a time-killer of the most mundane variety.

Reviewed at Arclight Cinemas, Hollywood, Feb. 12, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 116 MIN.

Production: (U.S.-France) A Relativity Media (in U.S.) release presented with EuropaCorp of a 3DTK and Relativity co-production and a Wonderland Sound and Vision production. Produced by Marc Libert, Ryan Kavanaugh. Executive producer, Tucker Tooley. Co-executive producers, Ron Burkle, Jason Colbeck.
Crew: Directed by McG. Screenplay, Luc Besson, Adi Hasak, based on a story by Besson. Camera (color, widescreen, HD), Thierry Arbogast; editor, Audrey Simonaud; music, Guillaume Roussel; production designer, Sebastien Inizan; art director, Christophe Couzon; costume designer, Olivier Beriot; sound (SDDS/Dolby Digital/Datasat), Stephane Bucher, Frederic Dubois, Didier Lozahic; re-recording mixers, Mathieu Dallaporta, Didier Lozahic; visual effects supervisors, Yann de Cadoudal, Rodolphe Chabrier; visual effects, Digital Factory, MacGuff; stunt coordinator, Dominique Fouassier; line producer, Marie-Odile Bertot; assistant director/second unit director, Ludovic Bernard; casting, Swan Pham, Justine Baddeley, Kim Davis-Wagner.
With: Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfeld, Amber Heard, Connie Nielsen, Tomas Lemarquis, Richard Sammel, Marc Andreoni, Bruno Ricci, Jonas Bloquet, Eriq Ebouaney, Joakhim Sigue. (English, French dialogue)

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3 Days To Kill Review

20 Jun 2014

117 minutes

3 Days To Kill

Kevin Costner makes a bid for Liam Neeson’s misanthropic action star status, armed with a Luc Besson script, a curmudgeonly attitude, mad CIA skills and an estranged daughter. With Costner’s dying ex-CIA assassin forced to keep his heart rate low, it sometimes feels like Crank in reverse – i.e. painfully slow. Director McG seems unsure whether to play the father/daughter relationship for laughs, and True Grit’s Steinfeld is wasted in a boilerplate ‘troubled teen’ role. Costner, however, is convincing – not so much ‘too old for this shit’ as too good – although the scene where his grizzled hitman teaches his daughter to ride a bike is more excruciating than anything in the Hostel films.

Movies | 04 08 2014

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – 3 Days to Kill (2014)

June 19, 2014 by Steve Leadbetter

3 Days to Kill , 2014

Directed by McG. Starring Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld and Connie Nielsen.

A dying CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter is offered an experimental drug that could save his life in exchange for one last assignment.

Another day, another Kevin Costner CIA spy thriller. Coincidentally, at time of writing, the previous days’ delight was the completely average Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (sounds like it really should be a game, right?) where he plays a covert and deadly accomplice to Chris Pine’s Jack Ryan. Here, he is an aging CIA operative, Ethan Renner (c’mon, really?) riddled with brain cancer that is very keen on also introducing itself to other areas of his anatomy.

Well, thriller is what you might expect. Given the premise, plot synopsis and trailer, you might be forgiven for thinking that 3 Days to Kill is just another mysterious wannabe excuse for our lead playing fast and loose with people’s lives, duffing up baddies and looking supremely cool whilst doing so. And to a certain extent, certainly in the first act at least, this is true. After that, however, the film decides to take something of an unexpected deviation from this charted territory and becomes something else entirely for quite a proportion of the running time.

After being retired by the Agency due to the previously mentioned ill-health, he decided to return to Paris, the home of his ex-wife and somewhat estranged daughter. The reason for their separation is never made crystal clear, but what is obvious is his ex-wife’s dislike for his chosen profession, namely killing other people and putting himself in harms way for a living. When he returns to see his daughter, he already knows of his impending demise, being given a few short months to live, so naturally, with nothing better to do, he chooses to spend what time he has left getting to know his daughter a little better.

So he goes back to his own apartment that he had rented some time ago, to find a family of African squatters living there. Nice squatters, of course, not crack whores, or anything. Initially, he wants them out, but like any good man with a pure heart he relents on his demands, especially as the daughter of this particular family is soon the give birth to a child.

And here is where the story really begins to turn. Gone is the undercover globe-trotting shenanigans, replaced by a story of a mostly missing father trying to put his house in order before he shrugs off this mortal coil and makes for the heavens. He is obstructed from all this peace and sobriety, however, by the appearance of the mysterious and seductive Vivi (Amber Heard) who has an offer he just can’t refuse.

So the film now turns once more, but not as completely as previously. The first act is an action thriller, the second act is an emotional family drama and in the third act, McG attempts to interweave the two narratives together with, if we’re honest, mixed results. The plot is a little tired throughout, being somewhat predictable in both act one and two, but if that weren’t bad enough, if you can’t see the third act denouement from a mile away, then you haven’t really been paying attention.

Costner pretty much saunters through the entire thing, not really being forced to stretch himself, emotionally at least. His Agent/Father quandary never really coming to the fore as you might expect. There are moments of mirth where this unconventional assassin does things that you will find hard to comprehend and believe and under normal cinematic circumstances, you might swallow these actions as the quirks of a man on the edge with nothing to lose, but given his family connections, you just don’t buy into some of his decisions, making the character of Ethan a little difficult to either root for or really believe. Costner’s performance is engaging, of course, but credible? Well, not so much.

Ably supported by Amber Heard, Connie Nielsen as his ex-wife and Hailee Steinfeld as his teenage daughter, the film is never boring and will entertain many kinds of audience, though it may well not satisfy any of them. Some nice action scenes fill out the exposition, but the moments where emotions are required feel underplayed and on occasion, are actually unconvincing.

Not one for the purist of any genre, but for those not testing their gray matter too much, this is run of the mill popcorn fodder for the masses, that will meld into your memory with another dozen or so movies just like it. Set your expectations for ‘average’ and you’ll be fine. If you’re standing in the queue at your local multiplex and you can’t agree on anything, you could do much worse.

Flickering Myth Rating : Film ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★

Steve Leadbetter

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3 days to kill, common sense media reviewers.

Decent lightweight action film packed with shooting.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The value of spending time with family rather than

The main character is a good guy, and he loves his

The movie features frequent, stylish violence with

The main character and his ex-wife are shown kissi

Language is very infrequent, but does contain the

Characters are shown sipping wine at home, or drin

Positive Messages

The value of spending time with family rather than working all the time is a central theme. Violence is stylized and life is taken without much consequence.

Positive Role Models

The main character is a good guy, and he loves his family, but he's a cold-hearted killer when his job requires it. He coolly dispatches several minions and lackeys throughout the course of the movie, with no consequences.

Violence & Scariness

The movie features frequent, stylish violence with lots of shooting and killing. Blood is shown, but the movie is not overly gory. Characters are threatened and lightly tortured for information. In a brief suggestion of sexual assault, three teen boys surround a teen girl at a club; they are shown attempting to pull up her dress while she says "no." The main character suffers attacks and hallucinations (the images ripple back and forth), accompanied by nose-bleeds. A woman is decapitated in an elevator shaft (offscreen). There are car chases and explosions.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The main character and his ex-wife are shown kissing, and they wake up in bed together. He is seen ogling her body as she wears a sleek nightie. A teen girl passionately kisses her boyfriend. A woman's naked bottom is shown in a tattoo parlor. A dancer onstage appears to be naked, though she is mostly obscured by smoke, and nothing explicit is shown. A main character is shown wearing seductive clothing, and in one shot, she stands over the fallen hero wearing a leather skirt; there is some mild spoken innuendo about this incident.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language is very infrequent, but does contain the occasional strong word, such as "f--k," "s--t," "damn," "hell," and "Jesus Christ."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters are shown sipping wine at home, or drinking casually in clubs. When the character gets his "attacks" and begins hallucinating, vodka is said to calm him down. He drinks roughly two-thirds of a bottle and, in a comical moment, is shown to be a bit tipsy.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that 3 Days to Kill is another slick, lightweight action movie by writer and producer Luc Besson . Nothing is very realistic and nothing is meant to be taken too seriously, but the stylized violence includes lots of shooting and killing, with very little consequence. Some blood is shown, but the movie is not overly gory. There's also some comical torture to get information, and a brief suggestion of teen boys attempting to sexually assault a teen girl. Language is infrequent but does include uses of "f--k" and "s--t." Sex is suggested between an adult couple, and a teen girl passionately kisses her boyfriend. A naked female bottom is shown in a tattoo parlor. There is some casual background drinking and one instance of drinking to comic effect. Teens may be drawn to younger stars Amber Heard or Hailee Steinfeld . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (3)
Kids say (5)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Should be rated "R"!

What's the story.

The CIA is on the trail of an international weapons dealer, called "The Wolf." Agent Vivi Delay ( Amber Heard ) is tasked to find him. Agent Ethan Renner ( Kevin Costner ) is also on the job, but lets a suspect get away when he passes out. It turns out he has brain cancer that has spread to his lungs. Moving to Paris to spend time with his teen daughter Zoey ( Hailee Steinfeld ), and perhaps to patch things up with his ex-wife ( Connie Nielsen ), he is contacted by Vivi; she thinks he can identify The Wolf, and if he helps, she can get him an experimental cancer treatment that could prolong his life. Unfortunately, his ex goes away for three days, leaving Ethan solely in charge of Zoey, who doesn't yet know the true nature of his job...

Is It Any Good?

Once again writer and producer Luc Besson has cranked out another second-tier, unpretentious action entertainment with a minimum of fuss. To be sure, 3 DAYS TO KILL is ridiculous in spots and downright preposterous in others, but it keeps up a brisk pace, throws in some exciting flourishes from time to time, and manages to cook up some genuinely sympathetic, interesting, and likeable characters.

Kevin Costner is a major factor. He is in great shape, but has developed the weathered look of a strong character actor. Amber Heard is also a great help; she's appealing to watch and portrays a bit of strength. Then there's former music video director McG , who thus far has not shown much talent in storytelling, but has at least shown a strong directorial hand at slick action sequences. That skill pays off here. Overall, 3 Days to Kil l is an appealingly simple popcorn movie that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the movie's violence . What would be the real-life consequences of the violence that you see here?

What's appealing about a character that kills people for a living? Is he likeable? Is he a good role model ?

What's appealing about the Vivi character? Is she a strong female character, or a stereotype?

How did you feel about the father-daughter relationship in the film? Is it realistic? What kinds of things did they talk about together? Did it inspire you to have a similar conversation in your home?

Movie Details

In theaters : February 21, 2014
On DVD or streaming : May 20, 2014
Cast : Kevin Costner , Amber Heard , Hailee Steinfeld
Director : McG
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Bisexual actors, Asian actors, Multiracial actors
Studio : Relativity Media
Genre : Action/Adventure
Run time : 113 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense sequences of violence and action, some sensuality and language
Last updated : April 17, 2024

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Movie Review

3 days to kill.

US Release Date: 02-21-2014

Directed by: McG

Starring ▸ ▾

Kevin Costner , as
Ethan Renner
Amber Heard , as
Hailee Steinfeld , as
Zoey Renner
Connie Nielsen , as
Christine Renner
Tomas Lemarquis , as
Richard Sammel , as
Marc Andreoni , as
Mitat Yilmaz
Bruno Ricci , as
Jonas Bloquet , as
Eriq Ebouaney , as
Joakhim Sigue , as
Alison Valence , as
Big John , as
Michael Vander-Meiren as

Amber Heard and Kevin Costner in 3 Days to Kill .

Co-written by Luc Besson, the premise to 3 Days to Kill sounds awfully familiar. An aging covert agent must fight and kill in Paris while dealing with his daughter. All it needs is Liam Neeson in the starring role, and it would seem to be a remake of Taken . To be fair, many of the details vary greatly from that earlier film, but it's easy to see that the idea sprang from the same mind. However, where Taken managed to find a good balance between over-the-top action and family drama, 3 Days to Kill never finds the right tone. It wants to be an action movie, a comedy, and a poignant drama at times. It is only thanks to the central performance by Kevin Costner that it manages to entertain at all.

Costner plays Ethan Renner, a CIA assassin. When he discovers, after collapsing in the middle of a mission, that he has cancer, he decides to reconnect with his daughter and ex-wife in Paris. Just as he starts to warm up to his old family, his job catches up with him when CIA officer Vivi (Amber Heard) shows up to enlist his help in killing an old enemy. In exchange, she offers him an experimental drug that may just cure his cancer. Can he finish the job without dying and losing his daughter in the process?

The movie succeeds best as a lighthearted action film. At 59 years of age, Costner still has charm on his side. He might be a little out of shape (something that no amount of scarves can hide), but he still makes a believable action star. He's helped in this by the fact that he seems a little more human than the indestructible Neeson did in Taken . When he chases one of the bad guys at the beginning of the film, he becomes winded and has to rest. However, he's still quite capable of driving fast and getting in fistfights and shootouts.

It's when the movie strays into family drama that it suffers most. The script is cliched and the dialogue groan inducing, despite a game effort by Oscar nominee Haliee Steinfeld as Ethan's daughter Zoey. The worst of these family moments comes when Ethan and Zoey are discussing her inability to ride a bicycle. "What kind of girl doesn't know how to ride a bike?" he asks. To which she replies, fighting back tears as the music swells, "The kind of girl who never had a father to teach her to ride!" Another moment of unintentional humor comes later when Ethan rescues his daughter from a nightclub, sweeping her up in his arms in a scene that will remind you of Costner's The Bodyguard . If only the filmmakers had played Whitney Houston's "I will Always Love You", the moment would have been perfect.

The other star of the film is Amber Heard. She plays a sexy agent who appears demure and professional in her first scene, but who changes her clothes and hair color in almost every subsequent scene, becoming sexier and stranger each time. It's as if she's appearing in another movie completely. Her surreal, espionage world seems to have no connection at all with Ethan's attempts at family life.

Taken turned out to be a surprise hit for both Neeson and Besson, reviving both their careers to a certain extent. I doubt this one will make anything close to the same amount that earlier film took in internationally. However, it, along with the recent Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit , proves that Costner still has plenty of gas left in his tank of charisma. He just needs better material in which to demonstrate it.

Kevin Costner and Hailee Steinfeld in 3 Days to Kill

Costner is certainly aging well. At 59 he is very much still relevant as an action star. Let me put it this way, the ageless Cary Grant played a spy in 1963’s Charade at the age of 59. Like Grant in 1963, Costner may not be in the best physical shape of his life but his charm still is.

The idea of a secret agent having real life problems has become somewhat of a common plot device. Besson has been a huge influence on this trend. Ethan is not well physically or emotionally. He wants desperately to connect with his daughter whom he has not seen in 5 years. Their relationship is sweet as it humanizes Ethan and provides some of the film's best humor.

Often, just before he is about to kill or torture someone, Zoey will call him on his cell, such as when he captured an Italian he intends to interrogate and Zoey calls asking for a spaghetti recipe. When Ethan meets Zoey’s soccer playing boyfriend, Ethan informs him that he likes football. The French teen responds, “American football.” Ethan corrects him, “Real football.”

The action scenes sometimes stumble a bit when Ethan's personal issues intervene. Why does he not turn his phone off when he is about to “work”? More than once, his illness just happens to come on during a dangerous moment. Enough action scenes worked though, to overlook most of the film’s flaws. The scene in the elevator, when Ethan meets Zoey’s boyfriend’s parents is particularly stressful as his personal and professional life collides. It leads to the movie's very satisfying climax.

Although he could have continued to work for another decade, Cary Grant would only make two more films after Charade . Costner proves here that he has the ability, and screen presence, to make many more films. I certainly hope he does.

Kevin Costner in 3 Days to Kill .

Scott's right, the problem with this movie is it never finds the right tone. One minute it's a stylish, ultra-violent espionage/comedy with Kevin Costner playing parent over the phone while he's torturing and interrogating people. Eric brought up the spaghetti sauce recipe scene, but there are several others, including one where his daughter's teacher calls him to set up a conference. He assures her he will be right over (just as soon as he's finished maiming and/or killing bad guys). On a side note, I found it interesting that this movie takes it for granted, without passing judgment, that the CIA routinely tortures suspects.

The next minute, though, 3 Days to Kill is trying to be a heartfelt family drama. There's the incredibly sappy scene Scott mentioned, where Ethan teaches his high school age daughter to ride a bike. There are also a few half-baked attempts at reconciliation between Ethan and his ex-wife played by Connie Nielsen, and we are constantly being reminded of the fact that Ethan has only a few days left to live. But when the script treats human life so cheaply, how is the audience supposed to care about the fate of this one man?

And then there are the scenes with Amber Heard. Besson should have written a separate screenplay for her since it seems, again agreeing with Scott, like she's in her own movie anyway. Viva Delay is a cool, sexy, dangerous character but she is underused and detracts from the central story of the film. Or else she needed to be incorporated into the family dynamic somehow and they should have ditched the whole estranged father/daughter bit and gone all the way as an ironic family spy romp with a violent edge.

The action scenes are mostly good. Ethan is a tough old sonofabitch. Although his heroics are a bit much at times. He is able to defeat every bad guy he faces, no matter how many. He does get beaten up quite a bit but the happy ending is never in doubt. And Eric's right, they do over-use the device of him getting hit by one of his dizzy spells in the middle of almost every fight. This is another reason why the family drama angle should have been dropped. This isn't the real world at all so why bother to pretend it is?

Costner still has it as a movie star and an action hero. He retains his charisma despite the double-chin and crow's feet (see photo). But a solid central performance isn't enough to save this script. 3 Days to Kill should have been a purely entertaining action/comedy. Unfortunately it was saddled with a bit too much hackneyed melodrama.

3 Days to Kill Review

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Last week when Akiva Goldsman dropped the insanely incomprehensible, pandering, and terribly uneasy Winter’s Tale , I thought the race for most alarmingly misguided and terrible studio project of the year was over early on. Fast forward to less than a week later when I am watching the alarmingly misguided, horribly directed, astoundingly racist, and insanely incomprehensible McG/Luc Besson/Kevin Costner team-up 3 Days to Kill to nearly blow it out of the water. While certainly not as much of a head scratcher in terms of plotting, 3 Days to Kill manages to be worse that this year’s already intensely low water mark by not having a single original, thoughtful, or unironic bone in its body. If you like this film, chances are it’s because you are laughing at it rather than with it, and if that’s your thing, by all means go for it. It still sucks even on those terms. At least Winter’s Tale has conviction to its silliness. This is just crass, useless trash.

Kevin Costner plays Ethan Renner, a mid-level CIA assassin who after botching a job trying to ensnare a pair of nuclear arms dealers (one named The Albino, because duh, and the other The Wolf, because why not?) learns that he has brain and lung cancer. He’s given 3 to 5 months to live, so I guess the title is there to suggest a sense of non-existent urgency and because you just can’t call an action movie 3 to 5 Months to Go Around and Do Some Stuff . He decides to use this time to reconnect with the teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) he has been neglecting in Paris (because why would a Besson film take place anywhere else?). Upon his arrival, he’s stopped by a CIA spook/femme fatale (Amber Heard, who’s only there to smoke and vamp it up) who offers him an experimental drug (that induces hallucinations that only vodka can keep under control) that could prolong his life if he simply agrees to finish the job he bungled in the first place. But he kept a promise to his ex-wife that he still has feelings for (Connie Nielsen) that he would stop working and his daughter doesn’t know that he’s a spy OR that he’s dying? What’s a recovering bad father to do?!?

First off, before I get too angry to even finish writing this review, let me just state the film’s biggest positive: Costner. As an action hero, he’s positively charming, affable, and likeable. Every second that he’s dispatching bad guys, even in the worst of scenes I kept wishing that he was in a better movie with this same grizzled performance. Even the tired one-liners that he spits (“You guys look like a couppla turds.”) come with a certain degree of world-weary panache that suggest Eastwood in his prime. The guy can still act even when saddled with what has to be the stupidest character he’s played since Message in a Bottle . Even when the film makes him unconvincingly cough through most of his dialogue and succumb to an annoying plot device that oh-so-conveniently forces our hero to collapse and hallucinate whenever he’s mere feet from the bad guys, Costner is still giving it everything he has. The only positive that could come out of this is that someone gives him a chance in this genre with better material to work with.

That’s all for the kindness, but while I have nothing bad to say about the rest of the cast who are merely taking direction, it’s easy to pinpoint how everything went so wrong. It begins with the screenplay from Besson and Adi Hasak which is too lunkheaded to even get clichés right and it ends with McG being so awful of a director that he couldn’t direct his way out of a wet paper bag that has a hole torn in it but he’s too busy flailing around to notice the easiest escape.

The critical pass that Besson has gotten (with the exception of his work on Leon: The Professional , parts of The Fifth Element , and Taken ) is inexplicable to me. He’s incompetent, leering, racist, and worst of all, completely unoriginal. There isn’t a single action beat here that doesn’t play out exactly as it has thousands of times before. His story isn’t even remotely a story, but rather a bunch of dust particles with bits of beats that simply crash into one another. All of the oh-so-witty bon mots that people try to defend to me as being “in on the joke” are of the kind that are so tired that they wouldn’t be taken at an old folks home because they actually died in 1987.

But let’s talk about the leering and the racism that makes it impossible on any level for me to like, condone, or find 3 Days to Kill even passable as a “dumb movie” This is a film so full of sexism and testosterone that it’s only a matter of time before some leering teenage bros attempt to rape Ethan’s daughter in a washroom at a rave. (Note: This scene comes after a hilariously ignorant hallucinatory sequence that suggests the only thing second in awfulness to rape that a teen girl can do is get a tattoo.) Of course, super dad (a.k.a. the guy who spent five fucking years not giving a shit about his kid) has to save the day. In the very next scene, his daughter is so ungrateful for saving her perceived virginity that she storms off and informs her dad, who has been carting around a purple bicycle the entire movie as an intended peace offering with his kin, that she doesn’t even know how to ride a bike. The very NEXT scene is Ethan showing his daughter how to ride a bike atop a gorgeously photographed top of a staircase where he wearily tells her there was no good explanation for why he was such a shitty dad, and the whole “I was nearly raped and my dad kicked some ass thing” isn’t ever broached again. Ditto Ethan’s wife, whose mistrust of her ex melts away when she returns from her business trip to seem daddy and daughter dancing together in the kitchen in reconnecting. So moved is she that they fuck in the very next scene (which is almost worth it to watch Neilsen wake up wondering what she just did while Costner nonchalantly sips on a coffee while fully dressed in a suit in bed).

The film is easily 30 minutes too long, and 20 minutes of it comes at the hands of ludicrously uncomfortable racism that does nothing except sit there and be really super racist. Like when Costner returns to his crappy rented apartment only to find that an entire family of homeless black refugees (including a precocious young boy and a pregnant teen) have claimed squatter’s rights over his apartment while he was recovering in the hospital. He’s informed that under Parisian law he’s not only not allowed to kick the squatters out, but that the police won’t do anything about it. So he has a heart to heart talk with the head of the family at gunpoint and tells them to stay away from his shit and then they serve absolutely no purpose except for the little kid, who makes sure no one walks in the bathroom while he’s torturing other ethnic stereotypes, and the pregnant girl who only pops up to give pensive looks and to eventually remind Ethan of what it is to be a dad in the most half assed way possible. What’s the point of any of this? Social commentary? To show that even a racists heart can be softened with the birth of a kid? Seriously, I have not one fucking clue.

BUT WAIT. There’s more. It’s not just one thing that does it. It’s a whole rogue’s gallery of racism that could only make George Zimmerman stand up and say “Fuck yeah, bro.” There’s the Muslim limo driver with connections to the vaguely Aryan terrorists, who only really gets to live because he’s a father and because he’s vaguely cooperative and really level headed when it comes to being tortured with duct tape and jumper cables. There’s a scene where he’s tied up in the trunk when Ethan has to pick up his daughter from school after she punched a classmate in the face. She says it was because she was standing up for her friend, a Pakistani who was being bullied. Mid-thought the Muslim guy in the trunk makes a noise and Costner knocks him out. Hilarious. Even more hilarious when two scenes later his daughter says it was never a bullying thing and she just knocked a girl out for hitting on her boyfriend. Which is essentially the movie saying “We’re not racist, except against some. Wait. Hahahahahaha. Nope. We’re actually racist.”

And now I’m too exhausted to even talk about the next person Ethan takes hostage, an Italian-Jewish stereotype (literally named fucking GUIDO) or the scene where Ethan says he’s eating “Chinese food” but it’s actually sushi, so I’ll just move on to talking about how McG is terrible as a director without even talking about how he’s complacent in the film’s overall reprehensibility.

I’m starting to think that the reason Besson’s films have gotten such a pass from people who should know better is because they are made by people who actually understand how to make an action film, like Olivier Megaton, Pierre Morel, or Louis Leterrier. Even before the film goes down a path that it could never recover from in terms of writing, the opening shootout less than five minutes in is a mishmash of horrid camera angles, staging that in terms of time and space makes no sense, and editing that makes it even harder to follow or care about. It’s a problem that somehow gets rectified as the film goes on by being as bland and unchallenging of an action film as possible. There’s a car chase that does the bare minimum and thinks it can squeak by having one gruesome death and big crash. There are some weak shootouts. There’s a conclusion that doesn’t even have one tenth of the force that an action movie climax should have. This guy just can’t make a film. Not only is he incapable of making a good film, he’s also too terrible to realize he’s making a one this bad.

I’ve never admittedly been a huge fan of McG’s lack of directing abilities, but somehow I have always tried to give Luc Besson the benefit of the doubt, and after tripe like Lockout , The Family , Columbiana , From Paris with Love , and those dreadful Taxi and Arthur and the Invisibles films, this really is the last straw. This film is worse than all of those combined. I haven’t felt this uncomfortable about something trying this hard to be likeable in a long time. I can’t defend the guy anymore, and should his name ever come up in some kind of defense or someone should try to pull me into an argument about his merits I will simply cite this movie and walk away. Then if that person tries to defend this film to me, I will cover my ears like a petulant child because I don’t want to know that deep down they might be a terrible person. It’s not an argument I want to have after I have made my feelings abundantly clear. I’m done with this movie. I quit. It’s the lowest point in one of the worst starts to any year in film history.

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3 Days to Kill (United States, 2014)

How did 3 Days to Kill , which doesn’t have the worst imaginable premise, turn out this bad? The problem starts with the screenplay, co-credited to Adi Hasak and over-the-top action aficionado Luc Besson. Still, although the more serious aspects of the script, especially the cliché-riddled fractious father/daughter relationship, lack flair, the writing on the whole isn’t terrible. Besson in particular knows how to mix genres and never takes things too seriously. It’s pretty evident he intended 3 Days to Kill to be a comedy thriller. Unfortunately, single-moniker director McG ( Charlie’s Angels ) didn’t get the memo.

Sure, there’s some wacky humor to be found in the final cut. The scenes featuring Amber Heard are weird enough to convey a sense of what Besson was likely going for. However, Kevin Costner is so somber and serious that he sucks out any sense of fun. Costner has made his share of comedies but it’s apparent he didn’t see this as one. Worse, the action scenes - which are pedestrian at best - are shunted off to the side to make room for one of the most tedious estranged father-wins-back-daughter’s-affection subplots ever to grace the silver screen. This material is awful . Costner and Hailee Steinfeld play the scenes like they were written by a great dramatist but every phrase they utter is hackneyed, there’s minimal chemistry between them, and nothing they do carries any emotional weight. It’s artificial, annoying, and boring . There’s not a single human moment in this film and any minimal momentum McG generates comes to a dead stop when these two are interacting.

The storyline transpires in Besson’s alternate universe where cops are incompetent boobs who never do anything more than interfere on the periphery and the laws of physics are suspended when required by the plot. Costner plays Ethan Renner, a CIA lifer who is diagnosed with a form of inoperable brain cancer that causes him black out at inopportune moments (like when he’s about to bring down the bad guy). The doctors give him three months to live, so he quits his job and heads back to his home in Paris to reconnect with his estranged wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen), and daughter, Zoey (Steinfeld). The teenager is resentful of him (evident by her insistence in calling him “Ethan” instead of “Dad”) so, when Mom conveniently has to leave the country for a few days, Ethan offers to play babysitter. This leads to tender moments at an amusement park and an adorable scene in which Ethan teaches his daughter how to ride a bike. Gag.

The CIA isn’t quite ready to let Ethan go. Top operative Vivi Delay (Amber Heard) needs his help to take out a couple of terrorist-types, The Albino (Tomas Lemarquis) and The Wolf (Richard Sammel). She offers him a deal: if he kills both of them, she’ll give him access to an experimental drug that will extend his life. Unfortunately for Ethan, the period when Vivi requires his cooperation coincides with the time when he’s chaperoning Zoey. Hilarity ensues. Not really.

It’s easy enough to see the film’s comedic potential and just as easy to identify how badly it botches the opportunity. Just about the only thing McG gets right is the handling of Vivi. She’s a bizarre, off-the-wall character - a living monument to fetishes of all flavors. The PG-13 rating, which McG constantly pushes, is at its most restrictive when she’s around. One gets the sense that, given some latitude, McG might have gone full-R with this character. Heard is deliciously over-the-top and livens things up when she’s on screen. Unfortunately, that’s maybe 10-15 minutes. The rest of time, we’re stuck with a brooding, grizzled, unshaven Costner.

The thing about 3 Days to Kill isn’t that every other line of dialogue sounds canned and every other action causes the viewer’s eyes to roll. It’s that the movie isn’t fun. And, more than anything else, Luc Besson stands for fun. Stupid fun, perhaps. Silly, violent fun, for sure. But fun. 3 Days to Kill is a slog. A chore. A tiresome 113 minutes in a theater that makes the idea of grouting the bathroom tiles seem preferable. After a number of years in relative obscurity, Costner has decided to re-emerge. Because I like and respect him, I’m glad to know he has several projects in the works. It’s just a shame this is one of them.

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Kill movie review: Lakshya, Raghav Juyal deliver a distinctively desi lean, mean killing machine

Kill movie review: this nikhil nagesh bhat’s fast-and-furious tale is its own creature, which takes care to surround us with familiar elements, even when ratcheting the kill quotient as high as it can go..

Complaining that there is gratuitous violence in ‘Kill’ is pointless, because the film is nothing but a string of sequences oozing with an overwhelming degree of blood-and-gore, a quantum we haven’t seen in Hindi cinema before. This is a no-holds-barred, brutal pro-max, going for the jugular-and-everywhere-else film, which bows to genre conventions as it starts the way it means to go on: slash, bang, thud, rinse, repeat.

The one line story– two commandos up against a bunch of bandits who invade a train going from Ranchi to Delhi — is basically an excuse for the action director and the fight choreographer to conjure up the many ways to kill a man. And, yes, a woman.

Those who are fans of genre movies, and have been watching the South Koreans show us how it is done (‘Train To Busan’, ‘Snowpiercer’), will find the desi ‘Kill’ derivative. But that will be ignoring how much this Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s fast-and-furious tale is its own creature, which takes care to surround us with familiar elements, even when ratcheting the kill quotient as high as it can go: the good guys are patriotic Army commandos, the bad guys are modern day versions of the good ol’ dakus, there is romance in the air, the young lovers stealing moments in the crowd, and the overweight cops, as always, bring up the rear.

A film which calls itself ‘Kill’ allows for no nuance. We know, going in, that there will be blood. The question is: just how ‘palatable’ is this ‘maar-dhhad’? Will it make us wince in horror, and close our eyes against the relentlessness of it all? Or will it become a spectator sport, where we, the viewers, will cheer on the good fellas, willing them to smash the baddies to pulp?

On that score, I can tell you that while I did the wincing and closing-the-eyes bit, I also succumbed to a moment or two of visceral delight at both seeing the bad guys get theirs, as well as marvelling at the action experts who made each of these kills different, using different parts of the train, and different methods of killing, to the hilt.

There’s also an excuse for all the carnage in the slender storyline which has just enough weight to carry all this slashing-and-shooting: one of the commandos, Amrit (Lakshya) is in love with Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), who is on the train with her heavy dad Thakur Baldev Singh (Harsh Chhaya) and younger sister (Adrija Sinha); the other, Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), equally skilled in weaponery and single-hand combat, is also busy fulfilling that old Bollywood trope, as the hero’s best friend.

ALSO READ | Karan Johar speaks up about Kangana Ranaut slap incident, says he ‘doesn’t support verbal or physical violence’

The posse of dakus is led by a son-and-father duo (Raghav Juyal as Fani, and Ashish Vidyarthi as Beni), and once the bets are off, triggered by a killing which feels even more gratuitous than the others, it’s a free-for-all, and the body count piles in grisly, grotesque ways. One, involving a fire extinguisher and a human head, is going to give me nightmares, despite my high tolerance for the shoot-and-scoot kind of movie.

The things that make this film distinctively desi also distract from the main task: the romantic bits between Amrit and Tulika remain banal but mercifully brief, as Lakshya is much better at snarling-and-killing than canoodling; and the insistence on making the bad guys human (there are tears when they find their compatriots twisted in shapes no living being can pull off, boo hoo), comes off more a digression than anything else. Making Fani this baddie who can switch easily between funny-and-vicious is also a trope, riffing off Bollywood dialogues, and coming up with his own (‘tum Rakshak ho ya Raakshas’?) even though Juyal is the most effective part of this film: he makes us enjoy him being a terrible human being.

The film itself makes itself desi because of all its references, from ‘DDLJ’ (can there be a pair of lovers on a train which doesn’t remind us of that iconic love-story?) to ‘QSQT’ (heavy-handed Thakur dads are clearly still in vogue), to the hero’s name which is that of a film in which our boys from the Army won over an enemy, to the old ‘dhanda’ of ‘chori-chakaari’ and ‘firauti’? But it’s also savage enough to really raise the stakes– it doesn’t pussy foot about trying to save all the main characters and sacrifice the ‘sidies’– which then gives Amrit reason to rampage the way he does.

So, that’s where it comes down to. Are you a fan of movies in which piling up bodies is the only reason for their existence, in which each kill comes wrapped in stylistic flourishes which then invites a counter and that’s how it goes, back and forth? And have you been thirsting for a desi Bullet Train, Die Hard, John Wick, or all of the above? Then this one’s for you.

‘Kill’ is a lean, mean killing machine. Get out of the way, if you’re faint of heart. Or hold your breath, and swing aboard for a wild, wild ride.

Kill movie cast: Lakshya, Raghav Juyal, Tanya Maniktala, Abhishek Chauhan, Ashish Vidyarthi, Adrija Sinha, Harsh Chhaya Kill movie director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat Kill movie rating: 3.5 stars

Karan Johar

Shabana Azmi recently shared that she initially avoided her now-husband Javed Akhtar due to rumours that Akhtar and his screenwriting partner Salim Khan were big-headed people.

Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar, one of Bollywood's most beloved power couples, have been married for over 40 years. Azmi, however, recently shared that she initially avoided Akhtar, even when he visited her home to see her father, renowned Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi, due to rumours that Akhtar and his screenwriting partner Salim Khan were big-headed people.

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‘kill’ review: lakshya & raghav juyal’s film is as innovative as it is violent, 'kill', directed nikhil nagesh bhat, is ruthlessly, unrelentingly violent 'cinema'..

For a majority of Indian cinema, violence has always been something to get through to get to the ‘real story’ – more often than not, the hero must fight, mostly unnamed, enemies to save his love interest. Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s Kill turns this premise on its head – here, the romance is something that gets used as a setup for the brutal, constant, and unrelenting violence to begin.

'Kill', directed Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, is ruthlessly, unrelentingly violent 'cinema'.

Lakshya in a still from Kill.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Kill has been the talk-of-the-town for being something Indian cinema has ‘never done before’ and in many ways, that’s true. Not every film requires a linear plot or excessive dialogues – all a film needs to work is a conviction in what it is trying to portray. And in Kill, that is violence and the makers have no qualms about trusting that idea completely.

This movie, that could just as easily be called ‘ Do Commando Aur Chaalis Chor ’, takes place primarily on a long-distance train bound for Delhi. Army commando Captain Amrit (Lakshya) and his trusted right-hand man Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) board the train to surprise Amrit’s bride-to-be Tulika (Tanya Maniktala).

Tanya Maniktala in a still from Kill.

This seemingly light-hearted premise flies off the rails when we discover that this train is the target of an organised bandit attack, led by the theatrical Fani (Raghav Juyal). As the heist goes haywire, everyone has something to prove and someone to save. The film wastes no time in jumping into action, after which there is little to no breathing space for the audience and I mean that in the best way possible. Kill is not a film you can breathe in, it’s meant to be experienced with one jolt after another.

The movie’s name itself contains multitudes – it’s obvious why it’s called ‘Kill’ but it also forms the basics of what separates Amrit and Fani. While Fani attacks to kill, Amrit doesn’t but as the minutes roll by, this morality starts to crumble – a safety mission turns into acts of vengeance.

The film has very little dialogue which doesn’t leave a lot for the actors to fall back on – for the most part they need to rely on pure physical acting. Perhaps that is truer for Lakshya whose transformation might seem sudden on paper but is measured and deliberate in his body language. And then there is Juyal as Fani. Fani starts off as the typical Bollywood baddie but with every decision, every dialogue that is enunciated just right, Juyal transforms Fani into something bigger, something more political.

Raghav Juyal in a still from Kill.

If the actors don’t have much to fall back on, neither does the technical team. Shooting in cramped spaces is a challenge on its own but to shoot fast-paced action where people are thrown between seats and skulls are smashed on whim is a whole other matter. Cinematographer Rafey Mehmood, Mayur Sharma’s set design, and action choreographers Se-Yeong Oh and Parvez Shaikh clearly understood that there was no scope for error.

These confined spaces expand and contract almost at will and yet, never in a way where the audience spots a misstep. Kill is a technical feat on its own.

The way the setting is utilised is even better – consider the sequence where Amrit goes through luggage to find anything that might make a good weapon or the way in which an inconspicuous suitcase becomes a weapon in the right (or very wrong) hands.

Since we’re on the topic of technicality, it would be unfair to not appreciate the foley work. Foley has, for the longest time, been one of my favourite behind-the-camera art forms. To make celery sticks sound like bone on screen almost feels like magic. The foley work in Kill is absolutely, breathtakingly perfect – even if you look away, you can easily predict what is happening on screen. And you might want to look away if you’re not a fan of gore. However, if you are someone who usually watches cinema with gore present, this won’t be too much for you – think The Boys.

Even the lighting team deserves a shout out. In a moving train, the way light moves and what it illuminates can be tough to predict but if it doesn’t move the way it must, it becomes obvious. This is a tricky line to walk especially since some characters use the cover darkness provides to make their moves. However, you don’t miss a single beat even in the dark.

My personal views on violence aside, if Kill had held back on any of its scenes; it wouldn’t be the movie it is today. That being said, there is one kill (that acts as a catalyst for someone) that feels too stretched-out perhaps to eke out the emotional stakes behind it. It goes on for a second too long.

Most action films tend to focus on the protagonist and his motivations but Kill gives ample space to the ‘antagonists’ as well. The action in Kill isn’t gratuitous like violence in Bollywood often is – everyone is acting with a reason. It’s obvious that the stakes for the ‘hero’ are personal but the film also makes the dacoits a family. The film is punctuated with the feeling of grief and loss – even the mightiest stop to grieve the loss of a loved one.

A still from Kill.

This single detail makes the film stand out – it is clearly relishing in the brutality but it doesn’t forget to center the price of such violence. These are human lives that are lost and this weight is conveyed by those left behind to mourn the loss. While never justifying their actions, the movie slightly humanises the dacoits.

“How will the families of our fallen feed themselves?” Fani asks his father, almost in a matter-of-fact tone. This highlights an important aspect of the film’s beating heart – the class rage. The film is not interested in presenting the dacoits are mere villains who are on a killing spree – it intends to make you think about their circumstance.

At one point, Fani finds his potential hostages and remarks of his “ acche din ”. When he speaks of Amrit, he says the ‘ rakshak ’ has become a ‘ raakshas ’; it would’ve been just as easy to say ‘ bhakshak ’ and move on but the similarity between the two words highlights how thin the line between the two has been in the film.

Morality in Kill is never black-and-white – in fact, one of Amrit’s transformation’s defining features is the way he is gradually stripped of his morality. Repetition would have been Kill ’s Kryptonite – for an audience that has been oversaturated with the over-the-top, gratuitous violence, the film’s savagery could have become tiresome.

But Kill is as innovative as it is violent.

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3 Days to Kill movie review & film summary (2014)
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3 Days to Kill movie review & film summary (2014)
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 ...
3 Days to Kill
3 Days to Kill. PG-13 Released Feb 21, 2014 1h 56m Action Mystery & Thriller Adventure. List. 28% Tomatometer 121 Reviews. 43% Audience Score 25,000+ Ratings. Facing a terminal disease, spy Ethan ...
3 Days to Kill (2014)
3 Days to Kill: Directed by McG. With Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen. A dying CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter is offered an experimental drug that could save his life in exchange for one last assignment.
3 Days to Kill: Film Review
It's all absurd in a way that is typical Besson. But it's also undeniably entertaining, and it marks a relatively pain-free way to kill, if not three days, at least a couple of hours. Rated PG ...
3 Days to Kill review
The latest slapdash pulp-dollop off the Luc Besson production line seeks to reposition Kevin Costner as a Neesony badass dad, casting him as a growly CIA type using a Parisian layover to juggle ...
3 Days to Kill
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 ...
3 Days to Kill
Budget. $28 million [2] Box office. $52.6 million [2] 3 Days to Kill is a 2014 action thriller film [2] directed by McG and written by Luc Besson and Adi Hasak. [3] It stars Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Richard Sammel, and Eriq Ebouaney. [4] It was released on 21 February 2014, [5] received mixed reviews, and ...
3 Days to Kill
As 3 Days to Kill tries to become a better movie, we can see the effort it makes to keep its curious comedy thriller self at a PG-13 rating. We hear two f-words (instead of, say, 20), we see near-nudity (instead of full), we see unremitting violence and a somewhat stylized high body count (instead of graphic gore).
3 Days to Kill Review
Verdict. There's a rather sweet (okay, saccharine) father-daughter story, anchored by Kevin Costner and Hailee Steinfeld, at the heart of the all-over the-place action flick 3 Days to Kill. The ...
3 Days To Kill
3 Days To Kill. Reviews. By Gabe Toro. ... 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 ...
3 Days to Kill
Mar 27, 2016. Luc Besson recruits McG and Kevin Costner for a fatally compromised tale of an American spy in Paris. The setup plays as if someone (presumably Besson, who is credited with the story and co-wrote the script with "From Paris With Love" scribe Adi Hasak) decided to graft the central father/daughter relationship from "The ...
'3 Days to Kill' Stars Kevin Costner
3 Days to Kill. Directed by McG. Action, Drama, Thriller. PG-13. 1h 57m. 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 ...
3 Days to Kill
The disjointed action movie 3 Days to Kill only half-works thanks to the performances of Costner & Steinfeld. ... 3 Days to Kill Review. Feb 20, 2014 - Killer dad. 3 Days to Kill Jim Vejvoda.
3 Days to Kill (2014)
DarkVulcan29 21 February 2014. Ethan (Kevin Costner) a CIA hit-man, who is the best, is looking to retire, and has been told he is terminally ill, has a few months left to live. Ethan goes to Paris in hopes to make amends with estranged wife (Connie Nielson) and teenage daughter Zooey (Haliee Steinfeld).
'3 Days to Kill' Review: Kevin Costner Not Quite Liam Neeson
Film Review: '3 Days to Kill'. Reviewed at Arclight Cinemas, Hollywood, Feb. 12, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 116 MIN. Production: (U.S.-France) A Relativity Media (in U.S.) release ...
3 Days To Kill Review
12A. Original Title: 3 Days To Kill. Kevin Costner makes a bid for Liam Neeson's misanthropic action star status, armed with a Luc Besson script, a curmudgeonly attitude, mad CIA skills and an ...
Movie Review
Movie Review - 3 Days to Kill (2014) June 19, 2014 by Steve Leadbetter. 3 Days to Kill, 2014. Directed by McG. Starring Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld and Connie Nielsen.
3 Days to Kill Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 3 ): Kids say ( 5 ): Once again writer and producer Luc Besson has cranked out another second-tier, unpretentious action entertainment with a minimum of fuss. To be sure, 3 DAYS TO KILL is ridiculous in spots and downright preposterous in others, but it keeps up a brisk pace, throws in some exciting flourishes from ...
'3 Days to Kill' movie review: Kevin Costner plays a good character
The movie -- alas -- is "3 Days to Kill," directed by the man who calls himself McG ("Charlie's Angels") and the latest production to come from EuroCorp, writer-producer Luc Besson's French action ...
3 Days to Kill
Movie Review 3 Days to Kill. US Release Date: 02-21-2014. Directed by: McG. Starring &rtrif; &dtrif; ... Co-written by Luc Besson, the premise to 3 Days to Kill sounds awfully familiar. An aging covert agent must fight and kill in Paris while dealing with his daughter. ... It wants to be an action movie, a comedy, and a poignant drama at times ...
3 Days to Kill
by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume 3 Days to Kill Starring Kevin Costner, Connie Nielsen, Hailee Steinfeld and Amber Heard Directed by McG From Relativity Media and EuropaCorp Rated PG-13 113 minutes 3 Days to Kill might be 2014's first guilty pleasure.
3 Days to Kill Review
Alarmingly misguided, horribly directed, astoundingly racist, and insanely incomprehensible, the McG/Luc Besson/Kevin Costner team-up 3 Days to Kill best's last week's previous low water mark set by Winter's Tale as the worst major studio release of 2013 so far, leading us further down one of the worst starts to any year in film history.
3 Days to Kill
It's that the movie isn't fun. And, more than anything else, Luc Besson stands for fun. Stupid fun, perhaps. Silly, violent fun, for sure. But fun. 3 Days to Kill is a slog. A chore. A tiresome 113 minutes in a theater that makes the idea of grouting the bathroom tiles seem preferable. After a number of years in relative obscurity, Costner ...
Kill movie review: Lakshya, Raghav Juyal deliver a distinctively desi
Kill movie review: This Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's fast-and-furious tale is its own creature, which takes care to surround us with familiar elements, even when ratcheting the kill quotient as high as it can go. Written by Shubhra Gupta July 2, 2024 12:51 IST. Follow Us Kill movie review: Kill is a lean, mean killing machine. ...
'Kill' Review: Lakshya & Raghav Juyal's Film Is as Innovative as It Is
Experience the relentless action of 'Kill' as Lakshya and Raghav Juyal redefine violence in Indian cinema. A train journey turns into a brutal battle for survival. Don't miss this innovative film.

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Reviewed at Arclight Cinemas, Hollywood, Feb. 12, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 116 MIN.

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