Not too far into “3 Days to Kill” (2014), recently retired CIA hit man Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) returns to his apartment in Paris. As he puts his key into the door, a young boy opens it, and Ethan realizes his apartment has been taken over by squatters from Mali. After threatening the leader with a gun, the first of many minorities Ethan intimidates and beats in the film, he leaves his apartment to advance the plot, but I really wish he hadn’t.
I could tell you “3 Days to Kill” is a heartwarming comedy about a grizzled hit man learning the true meaning of family, love and Christmas through the scrappy immigrants living in his apartment, but that isn’t the case.
Instead, “3 Days to Kill” is a derivative action-thriller that never seems to figure out what it wants to be. The result is a deeply unsatisfying film with some bright points, but not enough to illuminate the rest of the work.
Part of the problem is that the film places all of the chips on Renner’s shoulder. In addition to unwanted tenants, Renner is also dying of brain cancer. He hasn’t seen his wife (Connie Nielsen) and daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) in five years because of his job, so the former tolerates him while the latter openly despises him. And if that weren’t enough, he gets dragged back into his old life by his drop-dead gorgeous handler, Vivi Delay (Amber Heard), who promises a cure for his cancer if he can kill an international arms dealer in three days. Hey, that’s the name of the movie!
Does that sound like a lot to handle? Of course it is.
The screenplay, co-written by Luc Besson, the French director who loves to make movies about crazy Americans in France, is wildly uneven. One moment Renner will be dispatching bad guys left and right. The next, he takes a 30-minute sojourn to connect with the teenage daughter he totally doesn’t get, man.
That’s a shame. When “3 Days to Kill” does its action sequences, they’re pretty damn good, especially the opening shootout at a Serbian hotel. Director McG seems to get stuck with movies that are action-packed but saddled with dumb subplots that nobody wants. In the typical Hollywood mentality of trying to appeal to everyone by shoehorning in a plot about how much Ethan loves his family, “3 Days to Kill” ends up appealing to no one.
What’s so bad about the movie is that the people around Ethan end up being caricatures you can’t care about because you don’t know who they are. Viewers should understand a well-developed character by the end of the film. Although it’s hard to accomplish this in movies because there is so little time to tell the story, there’s a reason the films that do this well are so critically acclaimed.
Take Heard’s character for example. She is an attractive woman primarily in the film as eye candy. Half the costume and makeup budget is reserved for her inexplicable costume changes, which seem to get skimpier and skimpier with each of her appearances.
Contrast this, however, with her role in the plot as Renner’s handler. She shows up when it’s convenient for the story and does whatever is necessary. She’s nice to him even when it doesn’t make sense for her to be, and as a result, there is no reason to empathize with her. Sure, she may be the new version of the shadowy CIA agent.
But instead of staying in the shadows, she tries to come into the sun and withers away in the process, an analogy that could apply to “3 Days to Kill” itself.
Rating: 3.8/10
“3 Days to Kill” is currently playing at the Nugget.
