Paris, Incidentally

I prepare for a trip the way I get ready for everything else: by reading, talking about it, watching movies. I don’t always need the intensity of historical accounts; something light sometimes suffices. I just like to see where I might be going. So I marvel at a frothy spy movie starring Kevin Costner—3 Days to Kill (2014)—about an aging assassin with an age-appropriate ex- wife, a mouthy teenage daughter, a pretty young thing as his supervisor, and a convenient setting in Paris.

The place is completely incidental to the story (our assassin, beset by illness, is getting too run down to kill, but he needs the money and also the antidote) yet makes the movie watchable. This film is light in the vein of film as video-game stand-in: exploding hotels, interesting car chases, attention-getting cellphone ringtones, stuff teenagers tend to like. But I’d place it in my queue were I headed to Paris simply to see the sparkling Eiffel Tower.

—Lori Tripoli

 

Looking for more films set in Paris? Consider these posts:

• Paris as Protagonist
• What We used to Think of Paris, and Women
• Visit Versailles via ‘Farewell, My Queen’