Dear Christophe,

I’ll be honest, I’ve never heard of a “ripper” before. But you can’t possibly be the first crewmember dedicated solely to tearing fabric to simulate knife slashes and bullet holes. But in a check of no less than a dozen recent action films, I couldn’t find anyone else with your title. Even stranger, the costume department on 3 Days to Kill required not one, but two of you carpet killers (say hi to Mathieu Chatagnon, would you?). Which made me wonder: is there some hidden level of detail and precision in director McG’s latest joint that I’m missing out on? Am I just not able to see that he’s treading (or shredding) new ground?

The answer becomes crystal clear the moment Kevin Costner shows up—McG, despite his resumé, is just not very comfortable shooting action. He does, however, enjoying lingering on the aftermath.

There’s nothing wrong with that. We’re introduced to Costner’s CIA operative Ethan Renner in a hotel room as he coolly walks through his latest mission accomplished massacre. Pillows are destroyed, curtains are mangled, chairs are flipped over and torn apart…oh yeah, and there’s, like, half-a-dozen bodies strewn about.

You both did a serious number on the joint.

This kicks off another one of those deadly assassin stories that Luc Besson (the co-writer) seems to crank out in his sleep. Only this time he’s ripping off a reverse-Crank formula in which our hero is dying, and, because he needs to be injected with a secret serum to prolong his life, passes out every time his heart rate increases. Bullets and bombs don’t register, but seeing his ex-wife Connie Nielson in lingerie sends him spinning to the floor. It’s this domestic side of the story – aka. the shooting days you were allowed to sleep through – that stretches what should be a 90 tidy minutes of action into two hours—and there are a couple big problems with that.

For one: McG? Seriously? How is anyone supposed to take a director seriously when even his name is a joke? I get that he started out by making MTV videos, and that such singular handles are de rigueur in the music industry, but the film snob in me recoils at the idea of a ginger-headed white guy who has the moniker of an 80s rapper (Spike Jones, not included). But it’s not just his stupid name. McG’s work on the Charlie’s Angels films and the latest Terminator letdown haven’t helped his case.

Here, at least, he’s giving us a few moments to care about. Hailee Steinfeld, playing Costner’s daughter, makes for a believable sassy-but-eventually-sorry teen—but at the other end of the spectrum we have to endure Amber Heard giving a ridiculously cartoonish performance that made me think I was still trapped in the hell that is Machete Kills. Worst of all, her cloths stay completely intact the whole time. Not cool, Christophe.

It’s weird, too, that Costner’s wardrobe doesn’t suffer much duress. For the first two thirds of the movie, he’s never seen parading about Paris without his high-collar suede jacket, blue jeans and foulard, which somehow the French constantly confuse with looking like a “cowboy.” The majority of your work was reserved for mangling the costumes of the parade of bullet-fodder who make the mistake of crossing his path, including the Albino, the Wolf, and that poor nightclub bodyguard who Costner shoots in the toe while claiming his underage daughter (what did you use for that one? An awl? A Mikita power drill? Or did you actually fire a bullet through the shoe?).

However you did it, the scenes that featured your work made the film work for me; it was the non-wardrobe malfunctions that tore me up.