Throwaway ultraviolence and sickly sentiment are chucked together again in the latest lump of flavourless gristle from writer-producer Luc Besson’s Euro-thriller sausage factory. Standing in for Liam Neeson in the pistol-packin’ poppa role, Kevin Costner juggles the demands of life-threatening cancer, a snotty teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) and a multiple assassination assignment from Amber Heard’s tediously oversexed CIA femme fatale.
It’s hard to say which of these story strands is the least convincing, but our Kev tries his damnedest to take it all seriously as he races around Paris on a girls’ push bike randomly capping faceless bad guys and scaring off the Frenchies with just a flash of his weapon. ‘Charlie’s Angels’ director McG used to know how to marshal a decent action scene (if nothing else), but that touch seems to have deserted him. Psychologists would doubtless have a field day with the film’s lumpy brew of semi-incestuous paternal angst, midlife machismo, all-American dick-swinging and moderate racism, but we imagine most of them are too busy to waste two hours on this sludge.