3 Days To Kill
Hollywood’s onscreen portrayal of the notorious Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has changed quite a bit in the last 20 to 30 years. Whereas back then any movie character who was even remotely connected with The Agency was readily shown to be a bad guy and The Agency itself was always portrayed as being up to no good (accurate), in recent years there has been a spate of films that shows that Hollywood has done an about face on the matter, with various cinematic operatives and assassins now being the action hero good guys and The Agency in and of itself (while still shadowy) is presented now as having a vested interest in cleaning up the world from evil elements using its own vast resources. All of that is a crock of course, since it’s traditionally been in real life MILITARY operatives who would go on assignments to root out and take down the bad people while the real life CIA continues to do what they do best which is to control and dictate the direction of media propaganda (hence the possible reason for their shift to cinematic heroism). Regardless, this 2014 release is one of the better attempts to humanize and put an heroic face on a CIA employee, with no less a major star than Kevin Costner filling those shoes, having kept a nice career going for himself after the crucifying he had received years earlier over directing and starring in 1997’s The Postman (which was unfair because that movie was actually very good and even remains relevant to this day). Costner plays Ethan Renner, a career “company man” whom after his latest very violent assignment, learns that he has terminal cancer and is formally released from his service, leading him to head back to Paris where his estranged wife and daughter are living in an attempt to reconcile with them before he passes on. But then some unexpected things happen en route, starting when he walks into his own Paris apartment to find a family of squatters living there who warmly greet him and are actually protected under the French laws which means that he can’t evict them, leading to him reluctantly allowing them to stay (while he pops in and out especially if he needs a safehouse to interrogate somebody at) and then he treks over to his wife’s (Connie Nielsen) luxury apartment, explaining the situation to her and also promising that he’s done working for The Agency. Suddenly and out of the blue, up pops a glamorous female operative (Amber Heard, best known for her contentious divorce from Johnny Depp where both sides were equally at fault for various reasons but for which she became a real life all purpose bitch villain solely because Depp’s popularity was much greater than her own) who not only wants Costner to do one last assignment, but also brings along a batch of an experimental cancer cure, one which also seems to boost his strength and abilities as an assassin along with causing dizzy spells as a side effect and Costner reluctantly agrees knowing that he should now be able to spend considerably more than just a few last months with his daughter. Heard’s character here is pretty much an anomaly, and not in a good way: she’s shown in the opening scene being given her marching orders to kill a particularly troublesome arms dealer and during this scene she talks, acts and dresses like a completely normal person all while being told that Costner’s agent in the field will act solely as a mere liaison to help her take out the arms dealer which is emphasized by them as being her responsibility and hers alone. But when she encounters Costner in Paris, she’s not only glammed up in such a way that would make La Femme Nikita blush, but she now all of a sudden has taken on an almost coy, flirtatious (unprofessional) attitude towards Costner, basically telling him in no uncertain terms that HE is to do all of the dirty work on her behalf in this assignment in exchange for the mysterious cancer cure that she has gotten from somewhere completely unexplained. Whether any of this was literally sanctioned by her bosses is anybody’s guess as we honestly wonder whether she is really just doing her job to the best of her abilities or if she has actually gone rogue somehow and is now crossing the line blackmailing and manipulating the older agent to completely do her bidding. And we just keep on wondering about all that since besides looking good and driving fast in her car, Heard’s character has absolutely no discernible character traits whatsoever and appears to only be here in a glamour capacity, so don’t expect any such shocking twists involving her even as we realize that Costner could have gotten his marching orders in the story from Basil Exposition via text message and it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. But that’s all fine and good because the first priority of this movie is in mixing the action scenes that stem from Costner’s mission with the funny and poignant material showing his hitman trying to reconnect with his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld, an Oscar nominee at a young age for the Jeff Bridges remake of True Grit), an adorable teenage brat with an attitude and a legitimate axe to grind against her father for him choosing to “serve his country” by killing people instead of being there for her as a father. Amazingly, much of the interplay between them comes off as being heartfelt and sincere, a nice interlude from the over the top action bits which we’ve become accustomed to nowadays, even as Costner (having promised her that he would answer his phone anytime that she called) must drop everything he’s doing in order to take her call even if it means interrupting him interrogating or torturing some poor schmuck who has some kind of intel that would lead him to his target. We also get some fun scenes like Costner’s badass searching for his little girl at a rave party only to walk in on her about to be raped in the bathroom (uh-oh). As we get closer to the end and start to realize that certain plot threads are being introduced and then dropped with little to no resolution (including the possibility that the daughter’s boyfriend might actually be connected to the bad guys) along with Heard basically sashaying through a scene about every 20 minutes or so all while acting like she’s in a completely different movie than the one we’re watching, we actually come to appreciate the more quiet and moving moments here as the onscreen chemistry between Costner and Steinfeld is quite infectious starting off with the initial hostility factors giving way to the idea that this cold blooded, professional killer is now going to humbly hang his head and be the perfect and obedient father to this moody yet sweet girl who definitely deserves one. If only the screenwriting (by the legendary Luc Besson) and directing (by McG) had better balanced the other story elements with the one that works best here, then maybe we would have had an emotional yet roller coaster ride action classic instead of just a good family drama with some action movie scenes…
7/10