88 Minutes Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 04.18.2008
The title is false advertising...much like the script.
Directed by: Jon Avnet
Starring: Al Pacino - Dr. John Gramm Alicia Witt - Kim Cummings Amy Brenneman - Shelly Barnes Leelee Sobieski - Lauren Douglas Neal McDonough - Jon Forster William Forsythe - Special Agent Frank Parks Leah Cairns - Sara Pollard Stephen Moyer - Guy LaForge Kristina Copeland - Dale Morris Deborah Kara Unger - Carol Johnson Benjamin McKenzie - Mike Stemp Christopher Redman - Jeremy Guber Brendan Fletcher - Johnny d'Franco Michael Eklund - J.T. Ryker Tammy Hui - Janie Kay Victoria Tennant - Kate Michal Yannai - Leeza Pearson
Running Time: 108 minutes
Rated R for disturbing violent content, brief nudity and language.
There is no question among most movie-going people that Al Pacino is one of the greatest actors to have ever lived. The Academy-Award winning actor, who’s garnered an amazing eight nominations in his forty-year career, has created some of the most indelible characters in modern American cinema. Michael Corleone, Frank Serpico, Tony Montana, Vincent Hanna, Ricky Roma, John Milton, and Frank Slade…that’s just a handful of the many characters he’s given life, and no one can doubt his influence on the industry. It’s rather a sad statement, then, to say that Pacino has fallen on rather hard times as of late. Outside of Insomnia and Ocean’s Thirteen, Pacino hasn’t had a real memorable film in the twenty-first century…and let’s be honest, Thirteen wasn’t a Pacino film, it was simply a film he happened to be in. The man looks poised to make a comeback this year, between a teaming with Robert DeNiro for Righteous Kill and this film, the John Avnet-directed high-concept thriller 88 Minutes.
Well, there’s still hope for Righteous Kill. This isn’t to say that 88 Minutes is a bad film—Pacino’s certainly done worse in recent years. It’s simply not the great film that could kick-start his comeback.
The first thing that needs to be said about 88 Minutes is this—for those expecting a ‘real time’ gimmick in the vein of 24 or the Johnny Depp thriller Nick of Time, think again. While some of the advance publicity and word of mouth implies this, it is very much not the case. The film never tries to be real-time, and this is likely a good thing, as there’s too much going on in the story for it to be realistically compressible into that small of a time frame.
Pacino stars as Jack Gramm, a nationally-renowned forensic psychologist. Having profiled and interviewed such famous killers as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, his latest case, “The Seattle Slayer” Jon Forster (McDonough), is set to be executed after Gramm’s testimony convincingly resulted in his conviction. On the eve of Forster’s execution, Gramm goes home from a celebration with a seemingly random woman (Cairns), waking up the next day to find his whole world turned around. One of his students at the university he teaches at has been killed, in the same manner as Forster supposedly killed his victims. This of course throws doubt on the idea that Forster was guilty, which Jack suspects is something the man is orchestrating from behind bars in order to receive a stay of execution. Soon after, he receives a phone call that tells him he has eighty-eight minutes to live. That amount of time is very significant to Jack from a previous case that hit him in a very real and personal way, and Jack has only that small amount of time to determine who’s helping Forster do this. He has no small amount of suspects—there are several of his students, including Mike (McKenzie), a bleeding-heart who’s questioning whether Forster was guilty at all, and his teaching assistant Kim (Witt) who has a crush on him. Soon, Jack finds himself surrounded by suspects as the clock is running down, and he keeps receiving phone calls from an electronically-masked voice, reminding him how much time he has, “Tick tock.”
The problems with the film are evident from the beginning, and they fall largely on the script and the direction. The opening title sequence contrasts scenes of Jack celebrating with his students and Sara at a bar, set jarringly to hip-hop, with somewhat graphic photos from crime scenes. It leaves an effectively disconcerting feeling, but that’s equally from the idea of Pacino dancing to a 50 Cent wannabe as it is to the juxtaposition of happiness and death. Once that’s out of the way, we have a superfluous nude scene, which contains what is without a doubt the oddest tooth-brushing image I’ve ever seen committed to film. From there, the film starts to even out a bit, introducing the supporting characters who will, of course, become potential suspects and victims, before going into chaos when Jack receives the call that sets the countdown in motion. After the opening sequence Avnet is able to handle things a bit more deftly, but it does create a bad first impression that the film struggles nobly to overcome afterward.
The script itself, however, is a difficult mountain to climb. Screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson throws in plot twists left and right, and muddies the waters by introducing far too many potential suspects. At one point, when Jack suspects an almost-random security guard of potentially being behind it due to his familiarity with the Forster case, one almost groans. We’ve already been told and shown that the Seattle Slayer case has the nation’s attention; this is remarkably flimsy evidence to go on and just diverts the script with another unnecessary suspect. As time progresses, more evidence is thrown at people to lead the viewer to think it might be them, but it only serves to broadcast the real killer’s identity, a “shocking surprise” at the end that is only shocking in the weak justification for it. The dialogue manages to maintain a semi-tolerable amount of realism without being boring; tension is maintained through the recurring phone calls and the “trust no one” feel.
The acting largely follows the script and directing in its progression. Pacino seems to be in slow-motion from the beginning, carrying a “just got out of bed” look for much of the first twenty minutes of the film even as he meets with FBI agents and goes to teach his class. When things pick up, so does he, though he certainly never approaches the talent we all know him to have. The supporting cast fares somewhat better, perhaps due to less lofty expectations. Alicia Witt in particular holds her own against Pacino as his teaching assistant Kim, making her believable and sympathetic. Amy Brenneman, best known as the title character in the TV legal drama Judging Amy, acquits herself well as Jack’s professional assistant Shelley. Leelee Sobieski, who’s a good actress with a horrible choice of films (In the Name of the King, The Wicker Man), has little screen time, but makes the most of it until the end when her character loses believability. The last two main roles, FBI Agent Frank Parks and serial killer Forster, are played with typical reliability by Forsythe and Forster. They’re both very serviceable, though hardly stand-out.
The film, set in Seattle, has the Pacific Northwest feel to it that Hollywood seems to love for thrillers. It’s somewhat dreary without being melodramatically so, and being from that region myself, I found myself easily identifying with it. Unfortunately, a good atmosphere does not make a great film; it simply underscores how good the film could have been, without actually being that film.
The 411: It was amusing to note, as I watched, a scene in a parking garage where Pacino stops next to a sign that clearly says “P2.” With that and Sobieski, the film references two of horrendous films I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks. This one isn’t bad…certainly not In the Name of the King or P2 bad. But it certainly could have been much better. The cast tries its hardest, but the script offers far too many problems. One hopes that Avnet has something better to offer when his next Pacino starrer, Righteous Kill, comes around.
