By Denise Tristan/reporter
The action film 3 Days to Kill was sloppy due to its inability to connect the dramatic action scenes with the sentimental family drama subplot.
Kevin Costner plays Secret Service agent Ethen Renner, who is trying to patch up with his wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen) and daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld) after leaving them for five years for his job when he realizes he doesn’t have much time to live. The characters were so poorly developed that they could not portray with their body language or acting skills what the script was clearly stating.
Reconnecting with his family becomes difficult when he is called on to do one last job with a few more months to live as incentive. The movie only tells why Ethen is supposed to capture the two bad guys, The Albino (Tomas Lemarquis) and The Wolf (Richard Sammel), instead of giving the viewers the opportunity to care.
3 Days to Kill never successfully combines the two conflicts in a meaningful way besides simply putting characters pertaining to both conflicts in the same scene. This action-thriller seems as though it was supposed to have a sentimental family drama side to it as well. Because of poor character development, terrible writing and organization, it just doesn’t work out that way.
The plot seemed like it would be an interesting movie. Dying CIA badass lacking a sense of fashion realizes his career is coming to an end and decides to spend last few months with family but is forced to complete one last job because he is the only one still alive who has the skills to take out a huge bad guy. The best attributes to the movie (which are still not very great) are the varied action scenes and hilarious dad humor. Most of the action scenes are almost as good as all of the terrible dad jokes.
