New Releases: February 21, 2014

1. 3 Days to Kill (Relativity, 2,872 Theaters,113 Minutes, Rated PG-13): So, I’m glad that Kevin Costner has used the buzz his Man of Steel performance generated to restart his movie career. He’s having quite the resurgence, with two movies coming out this film season.

Of course, it would have been nice if the first film back wasn’t just Taken tossed in a blender and mixed up a bit.

Costner plays an ex-secret agent who tries to reconnect with his teenage daughter (Hallie Steinfeld). The twist is that it’s not her that’s going to be taken, it’s him–by a deadly disease. However, he is offered an experimental drug that could prolong his life if he takes just one last job.

2. Pompeii (TriStar, 2,658 Theaters, 98 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Stop me when this sounds familiar. A common, lower-class yet really good looking man falls in love with a girl of wealth and privileged. Unfortunately, the girl is to be wed to a rich and powerful man, a man who can and will do anything to destroy the poor young man. The wealthy man finally separates the two as a big disaster occurs. Now the boy has to reunite with the girl if he has any hope of saving her from certain death.

If you are hearing the strains of Celine Dion, you might not have to call a doctor. The plot of this film, at least on paper, is very similar to Titanic, only with an exploding volcano instead of a shipwreck, 1800 years earlier, and with a red color palette instead of a blue one.

The only weird thing about this is that it took Hollywood this long to copy that format for another run at the big bucks.