By design, action thrillers aren’t exactly beholden to such trivialities as logic, common sense, and a story that seamlessly connects a set of increasingly far-fetched set of dots, but The Next Three Days would have arguably turned out a great deal better had it not opted to play everything with such a solemnly straight face.
A remake of 2008’s acclaimed French feature Anything for Her, the Hollywood reinvention recruited an all-star cast featuring Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde, Liam Neeson, and many more besides to add an extra layer of blockbuster sheen. It didn’t really work out too well in the end, though, with the $30 million mystery earning a solid-if-unspectacular $67 million at the box office.
Reviews weren’t too strong, either, but a 66 user rating on Rotten Tomatoes is at least higher than the slap bang in the middle 50 percent it was awarded by critics. Big stars and high concepts remain a reliable method of enticing streaming subscribers, though, and The Next Three Days has done it again by becoming one of the most popular titles on Netflix.
As per FlixPatrol, the uninspiring caper has been rising up the rankings for the last few days, and can currently be found as the 14th top-viewed movie on the entire platform. It looks as if fans can’t get enough of Crowe hatching a daring jailbreak plot to bust his wrongly-incarcerated wife out of prison after the authorities fail to prove her innocence, no matter how derivative it may be in almost every respect.
