I have a lot of fun with Kevin Costner race against time spy caper 3 Days To Kill

Having been one of the relatively bright spots in the otherwise forgettable “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”, “3 Days To Kill” finds Kevin Costner back in the spy game, this time in a typically bonkers Luc Besson script and directed by lightweight action director extraordinaire McG (perhaps we should be grateful it’s not called “3 Days 2 Kill”, although maybe they’re saving that for a sequel).

As you’d expect from a Luc Besson story, one high concept isn’t enough and so we have a multitude of gimmicks thrown into the mix. Costner plays experienced CIA Agent Ethan Renner who is unexpectedly taken ill during an operation to capture an arms dealer called The Wolf as he tries to sell a dirty bomb to a terrorist group. Renner recovers the bomb and injures The Wolf’s henchman, The Albino, but falls unconscious and the villains escape. Monitoring the operation is Vivi Delay, an elite CIA Assassin, who realises Ethan has unknowingly become one of the few people alive to have seen The Wolf.

The cause of Renner’s illness is revealed to be advanced brain and lung cancer and he is given a few months to live. The devastating news prompts him to retire from the CIA and make a last-ditch attempt to reconnect with his estranged wife and daughter in Paris. However, after he has made tentative, awkward steps to re-establish his relationships by promising that he has left his life as a spy behind, he is approached by Vivi and offered a secret, experimental cancer drug which will extend his life – in exchange for returning to the CIA to hunt down The Wolf. With little alternative, Renner is forced to juggle his family reconciliation, a precocious and hostile teenage daughter and hunting down a dangerous arms dealer without any of them finding out about the others. Did I mention the drug has side effects that cause hallucinations, dizziness and eventual unconsciousness if your heart rate rises too high? Crazy, right? It’s conceptapalooza up in here.

Already released in America, this has received generally poor reviews, which I can only guess come from preconceived notions of what this film was going to be. This is not one of your hard-edged action movies like “The Bourne Identity” or “Taken” – instead, it’s a wry, ever so slightly tongue in cheek action comedy (think “True Lies”) where a bunch of often competing, sometimes complementary, plot elements jostle for dominance. Yes, it’s a bit all over the place, but I had a blast with it and if you approach it in the right frame of mind, you will too.

Costner is great in this and after a long period in the wilderness, it’s great to see him on screen in a role which lets him shine with the natural charm and charisma that propelled him to the top of the A-List in the early nineties. Hailee Steinfeld is superb as his initially frosty and distant daughter and much of the movie takes place during a three day trip to London taken by Renner’s wife (Connie Nielsen), leaving father and daughter to get along together (hence the title). Amber Heard’s Vivi is a sultry and sensual presence in the film and could have done with a little more screen time as she steals nearly every scene she’s in. Main villain The Wolf (Richard Sammel) is a little underused, but his henchman The Albino (Tómas Lemarquis) is sensationally creepy, and the rest of the film is stocked with colourful, well-realised characters, helping the film to motor along despite the abundance of plotlines.

The movie is quite comfortable combining comedy with action and it has the same manic sense of kinetic fun that Besson films often have. There are plenty of (intentional) laugh out loud moments and more than enough car chasing, gun-toting bad-assery to satisfy fans of action. It doesn’t redefine the spy thriller genre or break new ground but ignore the sniffy reviews dismissing this as a misfire. If you’re a fan of Besson’s previous works, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here and if you’re looking for a good-natured action flick with zero pretentions and a sense of mischievous fun, then “3 Days To Kill” delivers the thrills and laughs you want in a slick, likeable, knockabout package.

3 days to kill review
Score 7/10
logo

Related posts

30 Nights Of Paranormal Activity With The Devil Inside The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2012) Review

30 Nights Of Paranormal Activity With The Devil Inside The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2012) Review

30 Nights Of Paranormal Activity With The Devil Inside The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Review. As I think I’ve admitted before, I've got a real soft spot for spoof movies. I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for scattergun comedy – I even found some things to enjoy in "Disaster Movie"...

The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022) Review

The Bob's Burgers Movie (2022) Review

The Bob's Burgers Movie is a snack On the scale of animated spin-off movies, THE BOB’S BURGERS MOVIE sits comfortably in the middle, like a burger patty crowned with the top bun of SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT and above the bottom bun of THE SIMPSONS MOVIE which rests...

The Post (2018) Review

The Post (2018) Review

A story of the Washington Post in its (pre-Amazon) prime. It may be a timely reminder of the vital importance of a free and independent press but despite the zeitgeist-harnessing subject matter, there’s something that never quite stops the presses about Steven Spielberg’s “The...

Lovelace (2013) Review

Lovelace (2013) Review

A softcore biopic that fails to penetrate its subject The film “Deep Throat” came out before I was born but it’s still the origin of the phrase I knew first. Before I’d heard of the Watergate Scandal and way before “The X Files”, I knew of its existence as a porno movie. I’d...

Labyrinth (1986) Review

Labyrinth (1986) Review

There's no puzzle to what gives Labyrinth its magic. There’s an immutability to the best of Jim Henson’s work and it’s that sense of timelessness that marks “Labyrinth” out as one of the finest classics of his astonishingly rich legacy. While many of Henson’s frequent collaborators –...

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023) Review

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023) Review

A little too much of the songbird and not quite enough snake. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes us back to a post-war Panem, peeling back the veneer of the Capitol to reveal the seeds of the Hunger Games we know. Decades before Katniss Everdeen ignited rebellion...

What If… Ultron won? gives us a very different Infinity War and furthers Marvel’s strategic brand awareness of the multiverse.

What If... Ultron won? gives us a very different Infinity War and furthers Marvel's strategic brand awareness of the multiverse.

Jumping off from where WHAT IF,,,THOR WERE AN ONLY CHILD? left us, WHAT IF...ULTRON WON? finally fulfils the epic promise of the series' premise by giving us a big swing of a story that not only rewrites the established MCU continuity but also sets out to gather the disparate threads of...

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017) Review

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017) Review

Tra la laugh-a-minute family fun. There’s clearly a lot of love for the source material in DreamWorks’ adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s “Captain Underpants” children’s book series. Bright, breezy and unashamedly childish, it’s potty humour fashioned into fantastic family...