Disc Reviews

3 Days To Kill Review

13th Oct 2014

So Luc Besson and the Euro trash squad continue their quest for sub-standard action films utilising sub-standard directors (including Besson himself), some very rushed and diabolically trashy scripts (Often co-penned by Besson himself) and featuring a Hollywood hotshot of some sort. The most obvious reference is Liam Neeson in the Taken series. But let’s not forget about Statham in The Transporter series, Guy Pearce in Lockout and this very summer they got Scarlet Johansson in Lucy.

Some of these films hit it big (The Transporter, Taken, Lucy) and others not quite as well (Colombiana, Lockout).

Sadly 3 Days to Kill is one of the latter. It arrived in the spring of this year but the reception was not good – despite Kevin Costner still having a bit of wattage amongst the fan community; The combination of him and director McG (Terminator Salvation) you’d think might make for at the very least a visually engaging bit of fun. But instead it’s damp, stale and cornered by its own ridiculous conventions.

Joseph McGinty Nicol has had a bit of a “Brett Ratner” time of it with his Hollywood directorial career. Still waiting perhaps for that smart script that elevates him out of the Hollywood “Trashy action” genre perhaps? 3 Days to Kill wasn’t the best move for him (or anyone for that matter) as the film meanders too long before it ever decides to get going. And then when it does it decides that it actually wants to be something else and is then playing tug of war with itself when divvying up time between the father-daughter drama and the out and out gun play.

Costner is more than capable of doing either of this kind of material. But the script never truly lets the character out of the bag in order to do any true damage. Given the 18 rated credentials that Brian Mills had in the first Taken film then Costner could have made for an imposing hit man. Instead the action is swapped out for bad jokes at the expense of the euro trash characters he has to pay visits upon.

The drama between Costner and his on screen daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) is fair enough. But with the title on the box, it isn’t the film that people are paying for.

The film makes a few points for being such an odd film out of Besson’s production company doors. It has at least tried to present something else, but ultimately nothing truly satisfies. McG seems to have given up and put his feet up, the scriptwriters don’t seem to know what they were trying to say at the end, so it’s merely given an ending and that’s that.