Three Days to Kill (2014)

Kevin Costner goes a long way in selling “Three Days to Kill,” a Luc Besson-produced action/“comedy” about a dying CIA assassin named Ethan who goes home to Paris to see his estranged family – Connie Nielsen as wife, and Hailee Steinfeld as teen daughter – before he kicks. As it happens, the CIA has one last job for Ethan: Kill two bad guys known as The Albino and The Wolf, who are neither an albino nor a wolf. Golden carrot: Way-too young CIA handler Vivi (Amber Heard) has a magic cure that can keep our man alive. Costner acts aces, truly. But “Kill” made my skin crawl. I’ll say it: Besson shines a creep perv voyeur for teen girls here and with “Taken” and his so-long-ago “Leon.” He fixates on girls who cannot walk outside without falling victim to rape, not without “daddy” to save them. Steinfeld’s teen gets the treatment here. Besson’s fantasy? The take on grad-school-age Vivi as some 1980s Euro-fantasy dominatrix smells of a gross dream of middle-aged men with script approval. Nielsen’s wife has nothing to do but forgive her man, repeatedly. Blame director McG? No. This hangs on Besson. Dickless. D+

The Untouchables (1987) and Gangster Squad (2013)

Double bill: Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” with Elliot Ness versus Al Capone, and “Gangster Squad,” with L.A. cops against Mickey Cohen. Both are true cops-and-mobs stories repainted with Hollywood final blowout action scenes. Why allow Frank Nitti his suicide when Ness can toss him off a building? “Squad” plays looser with truth. 

Such is film. Facts hit the floor faster than bodies. In 200 words, my take downs on these mob take-down films.

“Untouchables” –- also based on the rah-rah TV show – follows Eagle Scout/U.S. Treasury agent Ness (Kevin Costner) as he brings in three like-minded heroes (Sean Connery as wise old cop, Andy Garcia as hothead cop, and Charles Martin Smith as nerd cop) to nail Robert De Niro’s Capone. Smart casting and smart-looking film. 

It smells of Chicago and spent bullets. De Palma and screenwriter David Mamet put us in gorgeous locales -– trains station, courthouses, and filthy red alleyways. Dialogue pops like spent lead: Connery barking about knives at a “gun party” is classic. 

I was 13 in ’87 and this became my Instant Favorite Film. The violence, male bravado, scope, and that shoot-out on the stairs. It’s a stellar cops-and-gangsters fantasy for… teenage boys. I’m wiser now, and the red-blood love has waned. This is a sloppy-ass film riddled with dubious continuity errors -– moving corpses, that wondering elevator in the assassination scene, a terrible voice dub throughout, and logic tossed aside in a courtroom finale. Too many scenes make me cringe. 

Was De Palma so in love with his own (admittedly great) style, he forgot the importance of details? Hell if I know. Costner is too fantastic to care. B+

“Squad” whiffs fake as “Untouchables” feels immersed in Chicago lore. You can smell the wet paint. I read Ellroy. Call me biased. Josh Brolin is WWII Army Special Forces vet John O’Mara, now a cop assigned to stop New York-bred Cohen (Sean Penn) from becoming the West Coast Capone.

O’Mara is very Ness to the point I believe writer Will Beall watched “Untouchables” on repeat. Lines are lifted whole. O’Mara also has his three heroes: Robert Patrick as wise old cop, Ryan Gosling as hothead cop, and Giovanni Ribisi as nerd cop. Toss in retro-progression with Anthony Mackie as a black patrolman and Michael Pena as a Hispanic flatfoot named Navidad. (Cringe.) 

Plot: O’Mara’s guys shoot the shit out of Cohen’s guys, who do the same back. Penn is comically spittle-tossing evil, his performance falls into hysterics. I laughed my ass off when a ridiculously dickensesque shoeshiner gets whacked. I gather director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) wasn’t going for giggles among the blood and rape. 

As Ness says, “You aren’t from Chicago.” Do not pretend. C

Robin Hood (2010)

Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” is a serious, boldly filmed drama, historically accurate as far as any film with the words “Robin” and “Hood” in the title can be, which isn’t much, and stocked with some of the finest modern actors to grace recent cinema. Russell Crowe is our bow-and-arrow titular hero, and Cate Blanchett is Maid Marian, with Danny Houston as King Richard. The film is gorgeous, bursting with detail, and must have cost a fortune. It’s also an utter fucking bore.

Painfully plotted and paced, this “Robin Hood” sucks every ounce of adventure, fun and daring out of the classic tale that pretty much created the whole idea of adventurous, fun and daring tales. This is no story of Sherwood Forrest or Merry Men, or of robbing the rich to feed the poor. No. This is a bloody war film about the evil Crusades and colonialism, fanatical religion gone nuts, and what made Robin Hood into Robin Hood, and a war-burdened superpower levying sinfully high taxes against its own people to pay the bill of sword and horse. Yeah, U.S. Bush-era politics! I can’t get enough of that. And this is a summer major box office film, too.

Crowe doesn’t resemble a starved, war-haunted rebel in the making. Dude looks glum and pissy, and a bit beefy. His Robin hit a lot of bars while killing Muslims, although he’s sure sorry for it. The killing. Not the drinking. Blanchett is at least having fun poking fingers at past Marians who became damsels in distress, yelling for “Robin!!” to save their victim ass. Wait, sorry, Robin again has to save Marian's victim ass, and during a slow-motion battle that copies “Saving Private Ryan” down to the soldiers drowning on a blood-soaked beach. Violent for a PG-13.

When did Ridley Scott become a dull film artist? Where is the guy who made “Alien” and “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator” -- films I could watch endlessly? The action here has been splintered to smithereens, and this whole ultra-serious moodiness and mud and blood, this religious devotion to detail and making 1199 look like hell on earth … it made me wonder what Michael Bay could do with a faster, louder, livelier, more vulgar screenplay. I can’t believe I just wrote that. (See, or don’t, Scott’s equally dull “Body of Lies.”)

It’s sad when I can say Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood” is a better adaptation, but it is true. That Robin at least had a personality. Even if the ha-ha British accent in that 1991 summer flick was shit. Crowe's sourpuss is as flat as the perfectly decorated sword he welds, ceaselessly without end. His hunger from “Gladiator” is not here. Alan Rickman’s hilariously evil Sheriff of Nottingham could wipe the floor with the half-dozen villains employed in this footless reboot, especially Matthew Macfadyen’s snooze-vile Sheriff. Mark Strong is the lead villain, and William Hurt appears, but I can’t recall who he played. There’s just so little to remember anything.

Seek out Warner Bros. classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood” from 1938 –- you know the one, Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Technicolor, green tights, and more fun than any movie made then or since. This new “Robin Hood” -– which ends with a shout out for a sequel -– should be outlawed. Attempted murder of a legend. D+