3 Days To Kill, film review: Kevin Costner is sabotaged by a cartoonish screenplay

(12A) McG, 117 mins Starring: Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen

Kevin Costner plays gnarled secret agent Ethan Renner in '3 Days to Kill'

Scripted by Luc Besson, 3 Days to Kill is yet another French-US thriller in the vein of Taken.

This time, gnarled secret agent Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) is trying to mend his relationship with his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) while also hunting down ruthless terrorists The Wolf and Albino. It doesn't help that he is suffering from a terminal illness and continually collapses just as he is about to apprehend his adversaries.

The director McG (Charlie's Angels) seems uncertain whether he should concentrate on the action or the family drama. The result is a contrived and silly film with some strange lurches in tone. One moment Ethan will be singing happy birthday to his daughter, the next he will be torturing his enemies. The attempts at ironic humour fall very flat.

The tourist-eye view of Paris disconcerts given that this is ostensibly a hardboiled action movie. Costner looks suitably weatherbeaten in a role that owes an obvious debt to John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Unfortunately, his attempts at giving his character some true grit are sabotaged by the cartoonish screenplay.