Review: ‘3 Days to Kill’

Oh boy. “3 Days to Kill.” Ugh. Let’s get this over with.

Kevin Costner plays Ethan, a dad estranged from his daughter and wife due to his commitment to work, and when he finds out he has three months to live thanks to some brain tumors that somehow spread to his lungs, he tries to reconnect with his family, who are currently living in Paris. His daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) calls him Ethan and prefers to hang out on her own, but of course slowly yet surely Ethan wins her over, despite also regularly screwing up by always being late. He’s gruff but means well and he promises his wife that he’s done with work and he just wants to be there for them and the whole movie is him trying to get to a point where his daughter will actually call him “dad.”

Oh by the way he’s a CIA field operative and a super deadly and effective hitman.

So this movie is this Ethan guy trying to be a good day and husband in his final days, but then the CIA swoops in and offers his some experimental medicine in exchange for “one last job.” How original. So the whole time while Ethan is trying to be cool with his daughter, he has to deal with tracking down some random bad guys for the CIA. Who are these bad guys? Who gives a fuck? It is most certainly not important at all as to who the bad guys are or what they want to do. They have some information about something apparently? Or they have a bomb? Or some files that they want to sell? Or steal? It literally does not matter at all. All we know is that Ethan has to track down “The Albino,” which will then lead them to “The Wolf.”

Seriously, folks, this is a movie which has bad guys named The Albino and The Wolf because who gives a shit about originality? Also, it appears that writer and producer Luc Besson cares not one wit about how Albinos have been negatively portrayed in entertainment for reals, much to the chagrin of people who actually have to deal with this condition in the real world without resorting to being evil. Just dig this link from Albinism.org to see how this trend is prevalent and kind of disgusting when put into perspective like this.

Actually this movie traffics heavily in stereotypes. Ethan is super American, to the point where characters constantly refer to him as an American Cowboy, he actually argues with someone that American football is “real football,” and he solves 99% of his problems with his gun. He also doesn’t know a lick of French and doesn’t even bother trying to speak it at any point. If this wasn’t an action movie, Luc Besson would have written him to be overweight, too, for sure. Also to go with the stereotypes, there are rape-y young French boys, a greasy looking Italian mama’s boy named Guido who has a red sauce recipe at the tips of his fingers, even the Paris of this movie is a stereotype, as Ethan can only eat his meals with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and must teach his daughter to ride a bike at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris because…there is nowhere else to learn how to ride a bike in the whole city? For perspective, this is like being in New York City and deciding that the only place to learn how to ride a bike would be at Times Square. Or if they were in San Francisco, they would have to go to Alcatraz Island to learn to bike ride. This is a tourist destination in Paris and there is practically no room to ride a bike there, which is actually pretty clear when watching this scene.

This movie is just dumb and annoying and really pointless. How it didn’t go straight to DVD and Redbox I have no idea, but somehow it was put in theaters to bore us all.

And by the way, for a movie in which a person has limited time to live and their mission is to kill people in a small window of time, the title “3 Days to Kill” actually has NOTHING to do with this set up, and instead comes from a scene in which Ethan’s daughter tells Ethan that they have “three days to kill” while they wait for the wife/mother character to come back from some last minute business trip. Ethan does not “have three days to kill.” Which sounds stupid when you say it aloud but at least it makes sense. This just annoys me to no end.

I guess that’s my final verdict for this movie. It is just annoying.