88 Minutes Review
by Steve Rhodes (steve DOT rhodes AT internetreviews DOT com)April 17th, 2008
88 MINUTES
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
Let's say people are being killed and your phone starts ringing every other minute, giving you the countdown to your death, starting with 88 minutes. Do you immediately call the cops? Or do you assume it's a hoax and go about your business, teaching a class, etc., trying as best as you can to fit in your own personal investigation into whether the threat on your life is real or not? If you have trouble answering that question, maybe you'll be one of the very few people who'll like 88 MINUTES.
It's been a full decade since director Jon Avnet released a feature film. His last theatrical release was RED CORNER, a real stinker staring Richard Gere as an innocent man being setup. Following in the same formula, 88 MINUTES follows another Hollywood star, Al Pacino playing FBI forensic psychologist Dr. Jack Gramm, as he is falsely accused and targeted.
88 MINUTES, however, which feels at least three hours long, manages to be even more unwatchable than RED CORNER. 88 MINUTES is one of those films that leave you with absolutely nothing whatsoever good to say about it. Our packed audience was as dead as the corpses that littered the screen. The pacing of the picture was just as terminal, since the movie moved like a dead man walking and was filled with dead time.
Most of all, what sinks 88 MINUTES is that it's both utterly ridiculous and completely predictable. Worse still is that the movie takes itself seriously. It's so bad that it borders on parody, but director Avnet and writer Robert King (CUTTHROAT ISLAND) never give us a chance to laugh with the picture. All of the laughs that it produces are unintentional. Some viewers won't be laughing at it for long, if the large number of walk-outs at our screening is indicative of typical audience reactions.
On to the film, if I must. After a brief setup, most of the movie occurs when notorious serial killer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), a.k.a. the "Seattle Slayer," is about to be executed. Since Gramm's testimony was the key to Forster's conviction, it falls to Gramm to answer what it means when someone starts killing people with Forster's signature style. Is there a copycat killer at large or was Forster innocent all along?
The script, which treats viewers like idiots, parades everyone with a 98.6 degree temperature past us and suggests that they might be the killer or killers. But, the real murderer is so obvious and easy to guess that it's like the editor drew a big red circle around the person in post-production. On the other hand, if you are among the one percent of the audience who guesses the killer incorrectly, you're not going to have any better time watching the movie.
Gramm is given 88 minutes to live by an unknown caller, who keeps calling back like a bad telemarketer. For quite a while Gramm ignores the warnings, but eventually he decides that he and he alone should track down his would-be killer. "Tick Tock Doc," the killer keeps warning him.
The movie, which never rises above cheap melodrama, has a jarring score and dreary cinematography to insure that there is no way possible for you to have a good time at the movies. I never bought a minute of the story, and I certainly never cared what happened to anyone in it. The only thing I cared about was when my sentence would be ended and I could finally escape the theater.
88 MINUTES runs an incredible long feeling 1:48. It is rated R for "disturbing violent content, brief nudity and language" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
My son Jeffrey, age 19, gave the film a single star, finding nothing good to say about it. He said it had more dead time than any thriller he could remember. He said the killer was obvious, he didn't care about any of the characters, and he thought the dialog was laughably bad but not in a good way. His girlfriend Yasmin, age 18, gave it * 1/2, saying that she hated all of the actors and the acting. She found it all very predictable, and, though the story had potential, nothing at all was done with that potential.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, April 18, 2008. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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