Could Have Been Better, Editing and Directing Ruined It

It seemed like the pieces were there.

Luc Besson wrote the script for Taken, District B13 and Unleashed/Danny the Dog, which were top notch action films with decent dialogue and characters. In a previous life, he directed some of the best action films of the 90's. La Femme Nikita and Leon/The Professional.

Kevin Costner is experiencing a bit of a revival with a lead in the new Jack Ryan film.

I think what ultimately failed this movie was the director, McG, who seems to have come out of the same school of directing as Michael Bay. Several times throughout the film, there was a montage with the characters pre-lapping dialogue from the next scene to compress time. Unfortunately, this takes you out of the moment and looks quite ridiculous as the characters are talking with no synced dialogue. Montages generally work with music or voiceover, neither of which were effectively used for montages in this film.

Jump cutting action helped pick up the pace, but jump cutting on static dialogue scenes is overkill.

Probably the most ridiculous scene in the entire film was when Kevin Costner experiences one of his cancer attacks in the club, slams a bottle of vodka, then somehow wanders into the bathroom where a bunch of young thugs are getting rough with his daughter. He suddenly turns into Ip Man, taking out all four or five guys with his hands. Oh yeah, he shot the bouncer in the foot to get in without getting arrested or drawing attention from the cops, who are more concerned about the civil rights of the squatters in his apartment.

Going back to a Luc Besson-written, random director formula that has generally worked for many years, Louis Leterrier and Pierre Morel pulled it off to great effect with Unleashed and Taken, respectively. Unleashed had Bob Hoskins, Morgan Freeman as supporting characters in it, Oscar-nominated actors who are several hundred notches higher than the dozens of supporting actors in 3DTK. This was noticeable from the very first scene with the B-movie extras posing as CIA.

They wasted a lot of money on scenes that were hacked to pieces by the editor. Car chase, boring...dialogue was terribly cliched. Ex-CIA with a broken relationship between his ex-wife and daughter...gee, that hasn't been done before by anyone. While I will probably watch Besson's next film Lucy, Besson should never work with McG again.