Amber Heard Plays A Sexy Assassin In A Movie Everyone Forgot
These days, Amber Heard is better known for the media circus surrounding her tumultuous relationship with Johnny Depp than many of her film roles. Long before Heard took the stand in the now infamous trial, she appeared in a 2014 action thriller titled 3 Days To Kill.
Though Amber Heard has made the decision to take some time off from acting, she still holds a whopping 49 credits on IMDb, as well as an upcoming placement in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Amber Heard stars in 3 Days to Kill alongside Kevin Costner and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse star Hailee Steinfeld. The film was written by The Fifth Element writer-director Luc Besson and his writing partner Adi Hasak, and directed by Joseph McGinty Nichol, professionally known simply as McG.
Despite having mostly left the public’s memory, 3 Days to Kill did very well at the box office when it premiered in 2014, finishing second behind only The Lego Movie.
The film centers upon Kevin Costner’s Ethan Renner, who works as a CIA agent dead-set on capturing a European arms trafficker known only as the Wolf. Amber Heard joins the team as an elite CIA assassin named Vivi Delay, who secretly suspects that Renner is in cahoots with the notorious trafficker.
In 3 Days to Kill, a young Hailee Steinfeld also appears as Renner’s estranged daughter, as the two slowly work to rebuild their strained relationship.
After being diagnosed with a terminal case of glioblastoma, Renner becomes disabled, forcing him to depart the mission. That is, of course, until Amber Heard appears with an experimental miracle cure which could significantly elongate his survival.
Renner agrees to help Delay track down and kill the Wolf in exchange for access to the special medicine, planning to use his additional lifespan to spend more time mending fences with his fractured family. The team is then put on a stern 72-hour deadline, allowing them a brief window of only 3 days to kill the arms dealers.
The film catapulted Amber Heard’s career as a leading woman and as an action star, allowing her access to a host of other roles in films.
As Renner experiences hallucinogenic side effects from the drugs, they begin to affect his performance in the field, forcing him to self-medicate with alcohol in order to mitigate the drug’s harmful effects.
Meanwhile, Amber Heard cooks up a scheme to lure out the Wolf by slowly capturing and extracting information from his low-level associates, rising the ranks until they reach him. Finally, the agents find themselves lured into a trap in the thrilling climax of 3 Days to Kill, as the Wolf decides to attack Renner where he knows it will hurt most- his family.
The film catapulted Amber Heard’s career as a leading woman and as an action star, allowing her access to a host of other roles in films such as Justice League, London Fields, and Gully. Unfortunately, despite making a great profit at the box office, 3 Days to Kill failed to wow audiences, resulting in an abysmal 27 percent score on the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.
Still, the movie has been lauded for its action sequences and performances by the main cast.
Amber Heard vs. Johnny Depp
Given the current state of Amber Heard’s career, it seems clear why 3 Days to Kill isn’t frequently revisited by the general public. The actress faced a significant amount of backlash following the Heard V. Depp trial last year, which sent a shockwave across social media due to its live-streamed release.
Netflix has recently announced plans to dramatize the events of the trial, perhaps providing alternate understandings of the incredibly toxic event.
If you’re an Amber Heard fan, you can stream 3 Days to Kill, on Amazon Prime with a Paramount+ add-on, though we can’t guarantee you’ll remember having seen it by this time next week.
