That chase makes a lovely pairing with McG’s other standout sequence: a montage of Ethan riding the bike he bought for Zooey through the city streets and parking near the Eiffel Tower. The notable exceptions arrive in a brief but slickly executed one-on-one skirmish in a grocery store’s deli section (complete with resourceful use of the meat grinder and panini press) and a bracingly staged car chase in the middle of a Parisian neighborhood inspired by Claude Lelouch’s “Rendezvous” and John Frankenheimer’s “Ronin.” On multiple occasions, the audience simply witnesses the aftermath of Ethan’s handiwork as repped by bodies lying motionless on the floor. Recent supporting turns in “Man of Steel” and “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” aside, Costner isn’t generally associated with the action genre - he’s more of a “Waterworld”/”Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” epic-adventure guy - and the rote heroics he undertakes here won’t do much to change that. From the bike-riding lessons on Montmartre to dopey interrogation of the Italian "Accountant," interrupted for a marinara sauce recipe, it's all part and parcel of the madness of Besson, "From Paris, With Love" - filtered through McG and slapping a new stamp of "cool" on aging Oscar winner Costner.As it is, the lukewarm family dynamics sit awkwardly alongside equally underwhelming action sequences. A canny touch is the old-fashioned split-screen opening credits, scored to the old R & B tune "Old Man Trouble." It fits.Ī tone-deaf touch? Having father teach daughter to dance to "I Want to Make It With You." Seriously?ĭaft and sloppy as it is, "3 Days" rarely fails to entertain. But that turns out to be a warm and fuzzy cul de sac, one of many in this movie, which veers from shocking shoot-outs to rank sentiment.Įthan's illness is forgotten for long stretches, but Costner, a hacking, weathered study in wrinkles and violence, never lets on that the whole affair is more of a lark than "Taken" ever was. She is one transgression after another, which Ethan seems loathe to punish and unable to reign in.īesson co-wrote the script, and he works in shots at absentee parents, lazy French cops and a legal system that allows cute African squatters more rights to Ethan's apartment than he has. Steinfeld's Zoey is a bit of a drama queen, but not a caricature of one. Heard, all lipstick and lingerie, long eyelashes and leatherwear - has little to do here, something of a waste. Everybody's always trying to high-five Ethan, and the French, Germans and others he runs into keep calling him "Cowboy."Įthan's clueless about how to deal with a teen, so he's always stopping the torture to ask one underworld guy (Marc Andreoni, funny) how to cope, what to do, how "to balance work and family." Her ring-tone on his phone is "I Love It (I Don't Care)," which always goes off just as he's about the rip a guy's armpit hair off with duct tape. "Dad" keeps trying to get his rebellious teen to ride this cool purple bike he brought her. McG ("Charlie's Angels," "We are Marshall") stamps his signature on Besson's Euro-action vision with running gags. "You might want to take something for that cough. The girl doesn't know what Dad does for a living, or that he's dying. ![]() And that could mean more time with his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen) and the daughter he barely knows, played by "True Grit" teen Hailee Steinfeld. The carrot? She has an experimental drug that might give Ethan longer to live. But his new control agent, a vamp named ViVi and played to the stiletto-heeled hilt by Amber Heard, wants him to finish one last massacre - taking out a nuclear arms dealer and his associates in the City of Light. Besson, who morphed into a producer after "The Professional" and before "The Transporter," gives Costner the full Liam Neeson in "Taken" treatment, cashing in on a career of cool in a movie that moves almost fast enough to keep us from noticing how scruffy, discomfiting and absurdly over-the-top the whole thing is.Ĭostner is Ethan, a veteran C.I.A.
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