The Next Three Days, 2 Guns, Bruce Almighty, Passenger 57, Daybreakers: films on TV today

With a dull, generic title to send you to sleep, and the name of writer/director Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash) to wake you up again, The Next Three Days asks: What if you had 72 hours to save everything you live for? It’s an intriguing premise, originally posed in 2008 French thriller Pour Elle (also known as Anything for Her), which in this remake’s case, exercises the ingenuity of Russell Crowe’s mild-mannered, Cervantes-teaching English prof, who decides to break his wrongly convicted wife (Elizabeth Banks) out of a Pittsburgh prison. With advice from old lag Liam Neeson in brief cameo, and our own Lennie James as the cop in gradual pursuit, he concocts a preposterous plan, which involves lots of running, driving, writing things on a map and trying not to get beaten to a pulp by Pittsburgh’s shady underworld. The crux is a complete change of character that Crowe can uniquely pull off: the James Stewart who must find his inner Gary Cooper.

2 Guns ★★★★
9.00-11.10pm Film4

Wahlberg and Washington are the triggermen of the title in this rollicking caper, which finds them playing undercover agents caught in the firing line between the good guys and the bad.

Bruce Almighty ★★★
9.00-11.05pm 5★

What would you do if you were all-powerful? Jim Carrey gets his chance to play God in a divine comedy that also features Morgan Freeman in booming-voiced form.

Passenger 57 ★★★
10.00-11.50pm ITV4

Wesley Snipes plays the security expert who squares up against Bruce Payne on a plane in this hugely entertaining action thriller in the Die Hard mould.

Daybreakers ★★★
11.00pm-12.45am Spike

The world didn't need another vampire movie, but blood is money in this clever allegory on corporate greed. Ethan Hawke and Sam Neill are at each other's throats, metaphorically speaking.

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