Rent 3 Days to Kill (2014)

Action Spy Film & Utter Tosh - 3 Days to Kill review by GI

Whilst Kevin Costner gets the odd opportunity here to show his action chops this is a weak, clumsy and inept film that makes little sense and struggles to classify itself. It clearly wants to be an action spy film built around the likes of the Mission Impossible series but then drifts into family comedy drama and the two don't always make for good story here. Costner plays Ethan (not Hunt I may add), a tough CIA field agent who is forced to retire after a mission goes awry and it turns out he has terminal cancer. He decides to go to Paris to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld) and wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen). But on the promise of a revolutionary cure he succumbs to the invite of sultry agent Vivi (Amber Heard) to finish off his last job. This threatens his new relationship with his family which cues a mix of killing and domestic strife! The film has it's moments mostly in the gritty fight sequences with a coughing and spluttering Costner seeming to find enough oomph to take down some immensely built bad guys. Heard plays a femme fatale vixen who constantly changes her hair and dresses as a pornstar, hardly very covert. The baddies are all Bondesque villains ie bald, albino, mysterious etc etc and basically none of it makes any sense.

A waste of just under 2 hours of my life that I'll never get back. It's awful. - 3 Days to Kill review by RP

Well, that's wasted just under 2 hours of my life that I'll never get back.

If you sit back, switch off your brain and let it wash over you, you might think this is a half-decent action film. But it's not. It's awful. In fact it's a dreadful, soppy / sloppy over-American film, with a ridiculous plot, awful script, too much gunfire, too many fights / accidents / falls with the 'hero' receiving nary a scratch or bruise, set in a strange version of Paris where no-one speaks French.

Kevin Costner plays an ageing CIA agent who finds out he is dying, travels to Paris to meet his estranged wife and make it up with his daughter he has neglected. He is re-recruited for another mission, has many meetings with daughter + boyfriend, teaches her to ride a bike, and has assorted shoot-outs and car chases during all of which he has lengthy phone conversations with his daughter. It's soppy, it's silly, it's very American - and it also has Mr Wooden Costner, who to his credit, has dropped his annoying, dislikeable nasal drawl for a deeper, gravel voiced effort.

I don't know where scriptwriter Luc Besson dragged this ridiculous storyline from - although the soppy aged agent / daughter / Paris elements remind me of a very, very bad version of 'Taken'.

This is without doubt one of the worst films I've seen in the last year. But unfortunately I have seen even worse, so I'll have to give it an over-generous 2/5 stars.

Nothing to set it apart from similar films. - 3 Days to Kill review by CP Customer

Kevin Costner trying to do things which a man half his age would not find easy. Good car chase, some funny bits, but nothing special.