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Felix Quinonez: I think the box office performance is as forgettable as the movie looks. Thanks to its low budget no one will be hurt too much by this. And with overseas grosses, it might actually make a little bit of money. However it is in no way a hit and no one's career will be ignited by it.

Max Braden: Lockout, a sci-fi action movie Besson also wrote and was released two years ago in April, only managed to earn $14 million in its entire domestic run, so by comparison this is a minor success. I've always liked Besson's projects (especially ones shot by cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, as 3 Days to Kill is, which is the foremost reason I want to see it) but I think for the most part they come across to American audiences as European knock-offs of Hollywood action. 3 Days to Kill does have an aura of made-in-Eastern-Europe to it. For example, Amber Heard is a knockout but come on with that ridiculous wig. This movie seems to have wanted to recapture the audience for Taken, but is missing something (a weak father-child element, maybe). And which fixer would you choose: Costner or Neeson? I think we're going to see significantly higher box office from Non-Stop when it releases this weekend and steals the remainder of Costner's audience.

David Mumpower: As I noted the other day, Besson's presence guarantees international revenue. Max mentions Lockout above, so I will note that it did better abroad with $23 million than domestically ($14.3 million). The same is true of 3 Days to Kill; ergo, it will be a moderate success story. Is it anything people should throw parties to celebrate? Of course not. Is it good enough to maintain the relevance of Besson and Costner as filmmaker and actor? Yes. I also agree with Mr. Huntley above about the talents of Costner. Sure, I mock him since that is what people seem to expect and want of him. I still say that there are few actors in this world who can claim a movie trifecta anywhere near the quality of Field of Dreams, Bull Durham and Dances with Wolves. He has also had a pair of sleeper hits in the 2000s with The Guardian and Open Range. Plus, he was in a couple of my favorite sports movies of the past 20 years, Tin Cup and For Love of the Game. I have always admired his ability to select scripts. He generally avoids clunkers, even if their box office is clunky.

Kim Hollis: Pompeii, a disaster film/romance (disaster romance?) from director Paul W.S. Anderson, finished with $10.3 million over the weekend. It had a budget of at least $100 million. What went wrong here?

Edwin Davies: Other than that Volcano movies, like flannel and Kurt Loder, went out of style in the '90s? Most likely, I think that the human element was lacking here. Disaster movies are primarily an opportunity for exciting spectacle, but the successful ones always have a central relationship worth caring about that makes the destruction mean something. The best example is, of course, Titanic, but even utterly, utterly terrible movies like The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 emphasized that the central characters had families that they wanted to protect, and whether they lived or died (supposedly) mattered more because you (theoretically) cared about what would happen to them. The romance in Pompeii was played down in the ads in favor of explosions, and I think that turned people off because it then just became Kit Harrington vs. The Volcano. (Tagline: You know nothing about geology, Jon Snow.) The lack of any big names didn't help, but I think the bigger problem was that nothing about the marketing made Pompeii seem compelling.

In the long run, I don't think this will be a total disaster. Paul W.S. Anderson's got a proven track record of making films that appeal to a worldwide audience, even if they don't do so well in America (all of the Resident Evil films did spectacularly well internationally, and even The Three Musketeers made over $100 million worldwide). Pompeii, with its emphasis on 3D and destruction, won't be an out and out failure, though the best it can hope for is a heavily qualified minor success.

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