Film review: 3 Days to Kill is an 80s-style cheesy spy thriller

3 Days to Kill
Starring: Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Amber Heard
Director: McG
Category: IIB

This mildly entertaining action thriller looks and plays like a film from the late 1980s. Co-scripted (and co-produced) by Luc Besson and directed by Terminator Salvation's McG, it's an unsatisfactory blend of action, family film and fantasy romance.

The central idea behind 3 Days to Kill is interesting enough; it's the kind of story that John Woo or Ringo Lam Ling-tung would have conceived for a Hong Kong crime thriller a quarter of a century ago. Kevin Costner plays Ethan Renner, a CIA hitman who discovers he has a terminal disease and only a few months to live.

Ethan, who has a home in Paris, quits the CIA and returns to France to spend the time he has left mending his relationship with estranged wife Christine (Connie Nielsen) and their daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld).

But then seductive CIA operative Vivi Delay (Amber Heard) shows up and offers him an experimental treatment for his illness - providing he helps her track down and kill a notorious criminal known as "The Wolf". Ethan accepts, but the arrangement throws his improving family life back into turmoil.

In the hands of a more skilled director - such as Johnnie To Kei-fung, for example - the story would have laid the foundations for a lean and well-balanced hitman caper. But McG's ham-fisted direction turns the serviceable idea into a big mess.