3 Days to Kill

The ad campaign for 3 Days to Kill wants to desperately make you think of the Taken films.  After all, they share the same screenwriter, Luc Besson, and both deal with a father-daughter relationship between a middle aged special agent (this time, the role is filled by Kevin Costner, instead of Liam Neeson) and a teenage daughter.  But, truth be told, the films are nothing alike.  And if i must be even more honest, I liked this movie a lot more than either of the Taken films.  It's light, it's at times very funny, and it features one of Costner's better recent performances.

Costner plays Ethan Renner, a hit man for the CIA, with a teenage daughter that he seldom sees, though he does try to get in touch with her to wish her a happy birthday over the phone while on his latest mission as the film opens.  His mission is to take out a pair of terrorists who are known only as The Wolf (Richard Sammel) and The Albino (Tomas Lemarquis), but Ethan hasn't been feeling very well.  He brushes it off as a really bad cold, but as he gives chase to one of the fleeing villains, he suddenly becomes very light headed and faints.  Why the terrorist he's pursuing doesn't take this opportunity to kill Ethan right then and there, I'm not really sure, but I digress.  Ethan awakes days later in a hospital, and discovers that he has cancer with only a few months left to live.  He's dismissed from the CIA, and returns to Paris to set his affairs in order, as well as break the news to his estranged family.

His wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen), learns the truth behind Ethan's return into their lives quite quickly, but Ethan is nervous about telling his daughter, Zoe (Hailee Steinfeld from the True Grit remake), about his recent diagnosis.  Zoe starts out as your typical sarcastic, angst-filled movie teenager, who gets in fights at school, and always acts embarrassed around her parents.  However, as the movie went on, I was delighted to learn that the movie actually is interested in developing a real relationship between Ethan and Zoe, and one that actually feels kind of genuine.  Christine has to leave for a business trip, leaving Ethan alone to bond with the daughter he's seldom spent time with, due to his job.  And while the arc these two characters take, from overall distrust, to grudging acceptance, and finally bonding love, is somewhat predictable, the performances of Costner and Steinfeld are strong enough so that we don't care if we are basically being manipulated at times.

While all this family bonding is going on, Ethan is approached by a CIA femme fatale named Vivi (Amber Heard), who wants him to do one last job for her, and offers him an experimental drug that could prolong his health and life expectancy as payment.  No surprise the job involves Ethan tracking down the two villains who get away at the beginning of the picture.  For the most part, 3 Days to Kill is a darkly comic film, as Ethan tries to juggle this one last assassination job, while at the same time trying to spend more time with his daughter.  What made the film work for me is that the father/daughter relationship makes up a lot more of the running time than you would expect, especially given the title.  The movie takes the time to build these characters and relationships, and while it's nothing deep certainly, they're developed enough that I found myself caring about what happens to them.  Sure, the transition from family bonding to violence during the spy scenes can be somewhat jarring, but even when its in action movie mode, it has a sense of humor about itself, reminding us that we're not supposed to be taking this all that seriously to begin with.

The film is directed by McG, who is known for his elaborate stunts and over the top action.  Fortunately, he knows not to play it too crazy here, and keeps a lot of the action grounded, while still being intense.  We don't see Costner doing a lot of things that should be impossible, so the action never starts to resemble a live action cartoon.  The movie is also very good at mixing the action and comedy, such as the moments where Ethan is interrogating some associates of the villains he is after, and he ends up having to take a call from his daughter in the middle of it.  Surprisingly, this is not a throw away gag, and the movie actually works this into the plot a little, with Ethan developing a bond with a limo driver for the terrorists, who has two teenage daughters of his own.  Not only are the sequences actually funny, but they serve a purpose to the character.  I liked the uneasy bond that grew between Ethan and the limo driver, and how they share parenting tips during their frequently hostile run-ins.

3 Days to Kill is kind of a mess as it tries to balance family comedy with violent action, but it works just enough that I am recommending it.  Costner fits the role well of an aging tough guy, maybe not quite as well as Liam Neeson, but he gets the job done, and you buy his struggles to get back together with his family.  This is an oddly sweet little movie, and I liked it a lot more than I expected to.

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