It was nice of the powers that be to give Kevin Costner another shot at driving a film. I’m pretty sure Luc Besson has Liam Neeson on speed dial for just these occasions, but instead Luc and McG went into their Paris closet, picked out a Kevin Costner, dusted him off, put a gun in his hand and *poof* aging hero. Kevin can still carry a film, which is nice. But the scripts he gets are all bullocks, which is not-so nice.
The CIA gets intel on a dirty bomb deal going down and sends Vivi Delay (Amber Heard, who’s never been better) to lead the diffusion. This is, however, the first five minutes of the movie, so the CIA screws the pooch and Costner’s dirtywork is for naught when bad baldy (Tómas Lemarquis) escapes. Oh, and why does he escape? Because Ethan Renner (Costner) collapses every time he has to move beyond a light jog. He has a terminal disease which makes him unable to function whenever a shootout is about to climax. It’s kind of annoying. Sorry, big man, but have you ever seen those ads with bathtubs? Try that.
“Ethan Renner.” Really? “Ethan Renner.” Is this a joke? Are you trying to catch me here? You’re actually going to name a fictional CIA operative after the name of the Tom Cruise character in Mission Impossible (Ethan Hunt) with the surname of his acting partner in MI:4 (Jeremy Renner). I can’t tell if this is clever or incredibly stupid, but it’s like naming a fictional Western hero: “Django Eastwood.”
The CIA has no problem letting Ethan die unwanted, unloved and unpaidfor until they figure out he’s useful. I would love to know which is actually the more callous of the two – the fictional CIA or the real CIA. Anyhoo, Ethan’s just a hitter, but he might be able to ID the big dog, or in this case the really big dog — The “Wolf” (Richard Sammel). So Vivi trades his services for some wonder drugs and Ethan –understanding he’s on borrowed time– gets to go play estranged-but-trying dad, yay!
Isn’t it sweet when your absentee CIA spook of a father shows up expecting a relationship but forgets you’re not nine-years-old any longer? Not much works about the relationship with Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld). She’s all over the map — mostly writing problems, not acting. She decides on a new way to treat dad pretty much scene-to-scene. There’s a lot of similarity with this and the Taken films, not the least of which is that disturbing 
“daddy-knows-all” crap. And, of course, the trashing of Paris in the name of righteous paranoia needs no further explanation. One moment was especially disturbing — when Ethan tracks his daughter to a night club and just happens to find her alone and in trouble. Where was Zoey’s boyfriend? Why did she go to the club alone? 3 Days to Kill refers to the amount of time he has to spend with his daughter while her mother is away and this is pretty much the first time Ethan has ever dealt with a lying child in his life; it just so happens to be the time when she needs him most. The scene concludes — I KID YOU NOT– with Costner carrying the helpless girl out of the club a la the way he did Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. What are we, re-living greatest hits here? And just as in the Taken films, however nice the nice 3 Days moments are, like when Ethan teaches Zoey to ride a bike, there’s always an undermining converse.
I’m fairly disturbed by the use of torture in this film – it’s as if we’ve said, “yeah, yeah, Zero Dark Thirty, blah, blah, blah, this isn’t a thing any longer, so now we can go back to meaningless painful infliction for the sake of information.” The more I think about it, the more alarmed I am by it – Kevin Costner tortures two different individuals in the film – one repeatedly– and yet develops a healthy, even friendly, rapport with both. What kind of human tortures his friends? What if they didn’t talk? How far was Kevvy willing to go? Fingernails? Waterboarding? See, the thing is if the object of your torture knows you have a human side, he gains a weapon. There’s also the whole, um, I’m sorry, but people who torture are kind of soulless AND if there’s anything we learned from our national period of soul deprivation, it’s that there’s almost no information that cannot be gained by other, non-soul-evaporating means. I’m leading to this – McG, Luc Besson, you’ve used torture here for the sake of humor. Upon reflection, I find none. And it really bothers me that a guy you’re trying to portray as “reforming” for the sake of developing a relationship with his teen daughter has no problem delivering pain to people he KNOWS are good. People who otherwise would be colleagues, even friends. 3 Days to Kill is a piece of fruit rotting from the inside. On the surface, you’ll perceive enjoyable, but the more you delve, the more you figure out the core is decayed.
CIA dad, as it happens
Covers all manner of sins
Strong-arming might
In that locale of light
Paris: City of Assassins
Rated PG-13, 117 Minutes
D: McG
W: Adi Hasek, Luc Besson
Genre: City of Fights
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Kinder, gentler torturers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People that take terrorism seriously
