Ten Statements About....3 DAYS TO KILL (2013)

This film is actually as much about this kind of scene...

1) If you’re thinking this is a script where Luc Besson scratched out ‘Liam Neeson’ and wrote in ‘Kevin Costner,’ you’re kinda right....but then, Besson has been known to work with other Hollywood stars whose light had faded (i.e. Travolta in the unbearable From Paris With Love), and I don’t know if Neeson would have worked as well as Costner does due to the nature of the role and his relationship with the family he’s trying to reunite wih.  Plus working with a group other than his stock players sometimes revitalizes him.

2) Boy, Amber Heard--who is obviously assaying the role Besson would have given his beloved Maggie Grace--is having a ball playing Vivi.  Never showing up in the same outfit or hair color or hairstyle twice, Heard ends up playing the spy master as one part Mae West, one part Veronica Lake and one part Sigourney Weaver.  She’s a delight to watch every time she walks into a shot.

3) I was originally dismayed to see McG had directed this picture....but I have to admit that the man’s style has matured.  Instead of the ADD style of his earliest pictures, McG shows a newfound capacity to handle longer, subtler scenes of genuine human interaction with style and grace.  More importantly, he’s discarded most of his jittercam action style and is able to choreograph his set pieces much more effectively.

4) You know, I can do without the subtitles for the guy who may have a real thick French accent, but is speaking in English.  I mean, yeah his words are garbled, but they’re understandable.

...as it is about this kind of scene.

5) Since this is a Luc Besson penned action movie, the actual villians are little more than video game stage bosses...hell, they even have stage boss names like ‘The Wolf’ and ‘The Albino’ and ‘The Accountant.’  But that’s part of the point when it comes to being a Besson Bad Guy--you’re there to make the bad ass hero look good.

6) Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this version of the Besson thriller is how Costner’s Ethan ends up going to some of his quarry for advice on how to raise his daughter.  This even creates a strange, sympathetic-yet-sadistic relationship between him and Marc Andreoni’s Mitat that has a very Lethal Weapon 2 Mel Gibson/Joe Pesci vibe.  And the narrative arc between these two is so satisfying that the ultimate payoff makes total sense.

7) Perhaps the big problem with the film structurally is that the film’s twist, when it comes--and you know it’s coming the moment The Wolf mentions his partner--isn’t set up at all.  We never see the partner until the final set piece, although we have seen one of his relatives.  It’s a strange and puzzling choice.

8) I find it fascinating how the closer Costner gets to reuniting with his family, the more he begins to look like our concept of a spy--turning in his pseudo-cowboy outfit for a series of more stylish suits as the film progresses until, in the final act, he’s the very model of a superspy.

Yes, Amber Heard...you are Pretty With A Pistol...

9)  Luc, dude...what is it about you having people’s daughters run off to do something naughty and then get, I don’t know, grabbed by slavers or, in this case, nearly raped in a bathroom by three guys?  You got issues you need to come to grips with.

10) You know, as good as the action is at times, some of the best moments involve Costner and his onscreen daughter, Hailee Steinfeld’s Zooey going through some of the rites of passage a father and daughter have, albeit a few years too late.  While I was in no way a fan of Steinfeld’s performance, finding it strident at times (this was a case where the film would have benefited from a much younger Maggie Grace), but there’s a genuine warmth between the two actors which makes their narrative arc thoroughly believable.

Overall...a typical Luc-Besson-European-Set-Action-Thriller like the ones he seems to pump out every year, but with a surprisingly warm emotional center and much more subtlely directed than I ever thought possible by McG.

I ventured into Manhattan to visit The AMC Kips Bay this time.  Trailers included typical action fare as Brick Mansions (Besson’s attempt to Americanize District B13 that might be more interesting because it’s the first posthumous Paul Walker role); Sabotage (Could somebody please tell Arnold to stop...just..stop?); and Edge of Tomorrow (It’s the Annual Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner, only with the ‘what is he doing here?’ presence of Doug Limon behind the camera), plus inexplicably one for a romcom (The Other Woman, which continues to chronicle Cameron Diaz’ ongoing ungraceful journey towards old age).

Ten Statements About....BULL DURHAM (1988)

"Lady, baseball gloves do not go with that
dress.  Nor does it hide the fact that you're
a hootchie."

"You never hand in your luggage in the show; somebody else carries your bags. It's great. You hit white balls for batting practice. The ball parks are like cathedrals. The hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains."

1) Let's get this out of the way right now: Susan Sarandon's Annie Savoy is a truly detestable character. She makes a practice of seducing young ball players under the rubric of teaching them to be better people; sends a young girl out to sleep with her prospective boy toys for the season as 'spring training;' plays mind games with Tim Robbins' Ebby LaLoosh....until it results on her not getting laid, at which point she whines and moans about wanting sex; and overall keeps trying to pretend she's anything but a hootchie. If this movie was about a triangle between Annie, Ebby and Kevin Costner's Crash Davis, it would be an unwatchable romcom....

2) ...which is why, thankfully, the romance stuff is just seasoning for what the movie is really about--baseball, both as a science and as a form of magic. Ron Shelton's script manages to address both metaphors for the game equally, and it's those moments of the players using different angles to get the results they want that make the film come alive.

3) It is a thorough shame that Kevin Costner decided at some point he had to be a big screen sci-fi action star, because it's films like this where his strength truly lies. Crash is a very vivid character, a professional who knows he's getting too old for this but is trying his hardest to hold on just a little while longer. And Costner manages to give Crash a level of arrogance without it leaking into assholishness. There are people I can think of right now who could look at this and get a message about hanging onto their glory a bit too long.

4) I was surprised when I revisited this for this review how, well, modest it is for an R rated film. The nudity is mainly clinical, happening in the locker room, and the love scenes all occur under the covers or are conveyed through implication. The rating, I suspect, is mainly for the language.

"Better enjoy this while we can, Robbins...in about twenty
years, you'll be single and I'll be in Actor Limbo...

5) God, I miss Trey Wilson, who was such an amazing actor capable of taking the smallest role--and his role is pretty small here--and making it big just with his presence. The thing that was coolest about him is how he makes every actor he shares a scene with look better. And when he had a great actor to work with--Costner, Tim Robbins, Roberth Wuhl--the film just shines for those few minutes.

6) And speaking of Robbins...it's tough taking a character from a cartoon--and trust me, LaLoosh in the beginning is a cartoon, a caricature of every bad boy pitcher that was roaming the landscape in the late 80's--to a fully realized character in the space of ninety odd minutes. And Robbins does so subtlety and realistically.

7) I think this is a film that worked partially because Robbins and Sarandon were falling in love on set. It gives the film a sense of veracity it might not otherwise have, making the strange handling of the payoff to this plotline work better than it should have.

8) Reason why this movie could not be made now #792: Shelton would not be allowed to end the film with Crash not sharing in LaLoosh's success. Even though the seeds of his being cut and leaving baseball are planted deep in the first act, a modern version of this film would have LaLoosh use his pull as a prospective superstar to bring Davis with him, or insist on Davis getting the roster spot instead of him, or some other sort of inspiring, punch-the-air nonsense....instead of the logical ending of seeing Crash struggle with giving this career up, break the record quietly and without fanfare, and head off to fade away gracefully.

It's a dark day when Tim forgets the chords for 'Michael
Row Your Boat Ashore'....

9) As much as I dislike the Annie plotline, I give Shelton credit for this--he finds a way to parallel her story with Crash's, gets her to realize that the two of them are not all that different, and have her 'fade away' just as gracefully as Crash, settling down with the man who understands her perhaps better than she does.

10) I have to wonder how the film would have benefited or suffered if we got a better sense of Durham as a city. The film's almost total immersion in the ball parks might explain why Annie does come off so badly; maybe if we saw her interact with her students, or with other people in the town she might seem less....well, skanky.

Overall...a great little film that works as a meditation on baseball almost more than it does as the romantic comedy, bouyed by some great performances and a clever script.