My Review: 3 Days to Kill (4/10)

"The wolf is the most dangerous terrorist this world has ever faced. Only you can stop him."

Despite not having a great tracking record, there have been a few of McG's movies that I shamelessly found slightly entertaining. 3 Days to Kill began with some promise and I was enjoying Kevin Costner's lead action role, but that feeling didn't last too long once the action scenes and comedy became repetitive. Luc Besson has directed some of my favorite films, but as a screenwriter he hasn't had much success with his latest films. I do have to admit he is trying something different by mixing genres, which partially worked for me in The Family, but it fell flat in 3 Days to Kill. The screenplay was weak, Costner's character kept on having ridiculous blackouts during every climactic scene, the father daughter relationship problems that tried to play out as a comedy were repetitive, and the villains never felt menacing. The only positive thing about 3 Days to Kill were the action scenes and Kevin Costner's star power. It's what he have come to expect from Luc Besson over the past years, some strong actions scenes but poorly written dialogues. 3 Days to Kill feels might have been directed by McG, but it feels much more like a lesser Besson film. 

3 Days to Kill opens with a scene at the CIA headquarters where Agent Vivi (Amber Heard) is given an assignment to hunt down a terrorist known as The Wolf (Richard Sammel). No one has actually seen him before, but his associate, The Albino (Tomas Lemarquis) is supposedly going to meet up with him at an international hotel. They also mention to Vivi that they have an agent on the ground named Ethan (Kevin Costner) whose only mission is to take down The Albino. The film then focuses on Ethan as he is getting the job done, but all of a sudden one of the agents is compromised and things get out of control. Ethan saves the day but just as he is about to capture his target he suffers a blackout and wakes up in a hospital where he is told that he has cancer and only a few months to live. He decides to spend his last months in Paris where his ex-wife, Tina (Connie Nielsen), and his teenage daughter, Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld) live. He always had trouble balancing work with family and that eventually led to him  losing them, but with only a few months to live he wants to make amends. Right after he arrives in Paris, Vivi shows up with an experimental drug that could save his life with the only condition that he finish the job by hunting down The Wolf and The Albino. In order to spend more time with his family, he accepts, but balancing out work and family proves to be a very difficult task.

I was glad that Kevin Costner got a lead action role and I thought he was pretty solid despite the weak character he was given. He might not be as menacing as Liam Neeson, but he is very charismatic. He had a smaller action role at the beginning of the year in Jack Ryan where he was also solid. Amber Heard gave a strange performance, but she looked great nonetheless. The cast was quite solid with Hailee Steinfeld also delivering, but my major issue had to do with the repetitive storyline and the way the final third of the film played out. 

My Review: This Means War (8/10)

¨It`s spy against spy.¨

This Means War is a really silly and predictable film, but I had a great time with it thanks to the excellent cast. Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, and Reese Witherspoon are great actors, and they prove it in this film in which they turn mediocre material into an extremely fun film. I couldn’t stop laughing while seeing Tom Hardy in action. He is one of my favorite actors and you can hardly recognize him in most of his films. I never expected to see him in a rom-com like this, and I usually hate most of these predictable and painfully unfunny films, but This Means War is the exception. It could be my new guilty pleasure, considering it did get trashed by most of the critics. Everyone in the theater I saw it with was laughing hysterically, so I guess I wasn’t the only one. This film was directed by McG, the man who brought the Charlie`s Angels to the big screen, and this might be my favorite film of his (although that isn’t saying much because I pretty much hated his other movies). The screenplay was written by Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg. It isn`t really funny, but the actors make the movie and the jokes better. I guess Chelsea Handler wrote all her lines herself because it sounded like the advice she would truly give her friends on TV. I wasn’t too much of a fan of her character, but the rest of the cast made the film for me. I knew everything that was going to happen, even the twist at the end, but that didn’t ruin the film one bit; it was seeing Hardy in this role I`d never think I`d see him in that made this such a pleasant experience. Witherspoon and Pine held their par as well. This is no Lethal Weapon, but it still was entertaining.

FDR Foster (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy) are spies working for the CIA. After their latest assignment blows out of proportions and leaves several people dead, their boss takes them off the field and assigns them to office duties only. FDR and Tuck were made for the field, so life in the office grows increasingly tedious for them. Besides working together, they are great friends. FDR is a ladies’ man; he is good at hitting on girls and having one night stands with them, while Tuck has a harder time finding a woman after his latest marriage failed. He does have a six year old son named Joe. Tuck decides to try his luck on a dating website so he publishes his picture and description hoping he can meet a nice girl. Lauren (Reese Witherspoon), who left Atlanta for a man that later left her for another woman, is now an independent working woman who hasn`t really dated anyone seriously after being dumped. Her best friend, Trish (Chelsea Handler), places a profile of her on the dating website without her permission. When Lauren finds out she ends up seeing Tuck`s picture in the site and decides to give it a try. The date goes well, but later Lauren runs into FDR who also makes a move on her (having not realized that she is the girl Tuck is dating). Both FDR and Tuck realize they`re dating the same woman and decide to compete for her without letting her know they know each other. They make a gentleman`s agreement and don’t think this situation will harm their friendship one bit, but what will happen when both men fall for her?

 The story is pretty simple and we`ve seen it before, but it’s the actors that make the movie so much fun. I focused mainly on the romantic triangle because that is the center of the movie, although there is a pretty ridiculous side plot dealing with a villain named Heinrich (Til Schweiger), but that story doesn’t do much for the film really. I guess they placed it there to keep some of the guys interested and have some action scenes, although the scenes are really cartoonish and dumb. The fun in this film isn’t trying to guess who Lauren will choose, but really seeing these two men fighting each other and trying to boycott each other`s date. Pine and Hardy are two excellent action stars, but I hadn’t seen them in this sort of role before and they were great in it. I laughed at most of the goofy moments, and I can see how so many critics hated it, but I can also see why so many people got a kick out of this movie as well. This Means War isn’t a memorable film, it won`t win any awards, but it is an entertaining movie and an interesting option for a date movie. I really had a blast with this film; my new guilty pleasure.

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