A12 RED DEER ADVOCATE Monday, Feb. 24, 2014
In 3 Days to Kill, bullets and pasta sauce don’t mix SPY THRILLER, FAMILY DIVORCE DRAMA OR WACKY COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 3 Days to Kill Two stars (out of four) Rated: PG
Film probes quirky Broadway role of performers paid to not appear BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Merwin Foard has one of the oddest jobs on Broadway: He gets paid not to perform. Foard is a top standby — an actor hired to wait in the wings of Broadway shows each night, ready in full costume, just in case the star of the show gets injured or sick. If all goes well, the audience will never see the standby. “It is a tricky thing. You have to eat a lot of humble pie,” says Foard, who is currently a standby in “Aladdin” at the New Amsterdam Theatre. “You can’t have an ego. And you have to look at the bigger picture.” This month, Foard finally gets his own starring part, but in a film: “The Standbys,” a documentary by director Stephanie Riggs that tells the professional and personal story of three Broadway standbys. Unlike understudies or swings, who both perform in the ensemble, standbys only get onstage if there’s been a disaster. It is not uncommon to hear an audience boo when it is announced they’ll be going on. For 2 ½ years starting in 2009, Riggs followed Foard, who was backing up Nathan Lane in “The Addams Family” and Ben Crawford, who covered the title role in “Shrek the Musical.” She also watched Alena Watters, a standby in “West Side Story” who includes a harrowing story about the life of a backup in a Bette Midler touring show. “I wanted to find some people to follow and see the world through their eyes and see what they go through,” says Riggs. “Just because they aren’t onstage every night doesn’t mean that they aren’t incredibly talented and incredibly gifted and worth supporting.” The filmmaker also has included interviews about standbys with Zachary Quinto, David Hyde Pierce, Bebe Neuwirth, Brian
D’Arcy James, Cheyenne Jackson, Sutton Foster and Katie Finneran. The film, whose original release last year was hampered by Hurricane Sandy, will open Friday for a run at the Greenwich Village’s Quad Cinemas and then be available Feb. 28 streaming on demand. Foard, married with two girls, allowed a camera crew into his dressing room and home life. Though blessed with a tremendous voice and tons of versatility, most nights he’s often sitting quietly only a few feet from the stage. “If I was in that situation, could I do that?” asks Riggs. “Could I watch someone else do a job that I am fully capable of doing? And yet stand on the side and watch somebody else do it? I was inspired by them.” Foard, currently celebrating his 30th year in show business, has been the understudy or standby for the likes of Brian Stokes Mitchell in “Kiss Me Kate,” Michael Cerveris in “Sweeney Todd” and Shuler Hensley in “Oklahoma!” He’s been a standby for King Triton in “The Little Mermaid” and Oliver Warbucks in “Annie.” While he naturally would love to share his natural gifts with theatregoers, Foard has a family to support and can’t always give up steady work to wait for a starring part. “I turned down a role in a Broadway musical that is now in previews that I would have had a lead role in because it would have meant that I had to wait six months for that show to happen. And I couldn’t do that. I knew that my family could not have that drought in our income,” he says. The irony is not lost on Foard that, after the release of the film, he may be more famous as a movie star than a theatre performer. “The idea that more people will see me via this film than have seen me onstage in any capacity is kind of staggering,” he says, laughing.
Renner’s hostage is Italian, he must know how to make a good sauce, right? The Italian’s name is Guido, Long before Kevin Costner is and the movie is rife with such demanding pasta sauce info at stereotypes. There are also shruggunpoint from a terrified Italian ging Frenchmen, officious Gerhostage in 3 Days to Kill, it’s obvi- mans and rude and impatient ous no one is following any kind Americans. of coherent recipe for this movie. The latter is amply demonIt’s an international spy thrill- strated by Costner’s character, er. On second thought, it’s a fam- whose trigger-happy behaviour ily divorce drama. No, wait, it’s a and rant about “real football” (he comedy about wacky Americans has no use for soccer) certainly in Paris. But then again, should play into unhappy clichéd notions we be laughing about about U.S. citizens in a guy dying of brain Europe. cancer? And speaking of 3 Days to Kill is all clichés, could Besson of these things, beand McG possibly have cause it seems writer/ worked more shots of producer Luc Besson the Eiffel Tower into (the Taken franchise) this film? It shows up and director McG so often, it should have (Charlie’s Angels, This been given marquee Means War) were too billing. busy mixing ingrediPerhaps they were ents from their own hoping that 3 Days to past movies to agree Kill could also serve on what they were as a tourism video for PETER jointly trying to conParis. And what’s one HOWELL coct here. more role for a film Besson (and cothat is already overwriter Adi Hasak) loaded with them? contribute the Paris setting, the terrorism threat, the high body count and the squealing car chases on city streets. McG evidently goes in for the goofy character stuff, such as the habit of Costner’s veteran CIA hit man Ethan Renner to demand child rearing advice from the same people he may soon be filling full of lead. The film’s not-so-clever title tips to its scrambled intentions. Renner has a long weekend to stop an international terrorist and arms dealer known as “the Wolf” (yawn), who is planning to peddle a dirty bomb to a band of nogoodniks, with global mayhem ensuing thereafter. In the same amount of time, Renner must also make good with his rebellious teen daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld) and ex-wife Christine (Connie Nielsen). He abandoned them five years ago and they now live in Paris, trying to forget him. If this isn’t enough to keep the clock ticking in overdrive, Renner also has to deal with the death sentence just handed him by his doc. He has a rare form of brain cancer that will claim him in about three months — unless he can cure it with the radical new serum offered by sexy fellow CIA operative Vivi (Amber Heard), who is offering jabs from her hypo in exchange for bullets in the hide of Wolf and his stooges. Renner had been planning to hang up his silencer — his former spouse is demanding it as a precondition to family reunion — but Vivi’s choice is more urgent: “Kill, or die.” It’s laudable to make Costner’s character more than just another flintyeyed tough guy, the kind he regularly portrayed in his 1980s heyday. He actually seems to be enjoying this gig, never a sure thing with him. And it’s very good that he’s gray-haired and TM paired with Nielsen, 48, who is more appropriate to his real age, 59, than * Heard, 27. (This doesn’t stop Heard’s Vivi from † trying, of course: “I’m everybody’s type,” she coos.) But with so much being tossed into the stewpot, 3 Days to Kill becomes indigestible. It’s why you get ridiculous scenes like the one where Renner is aiming a gun at the aforementioned Italian hostage, who has been duct-taped onto a toilet. 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