Film Review

09 January 2009 12:39 BST

88 Minutes

Directed by Jon Avnet, out now, starring Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, running time 107 mins.

In a nutshell...

Low-rent, serial killer schlock.

What's it all about?

Hours before the execution of a killer he helped put away, FBI shrink and lecturer Jack Gramm (Pacino) is told by a mysterious caller that he has 88 minutes to live. Surrounded by suspicious students on a busy college campus, Gramm calls on the help of his loyal secretary (Brenneman) as he races to save his skin.


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Who's in it?

Al Pacino needs little introduction, having headlined the Godfather films as well as such classics as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and the iconic Scarface. In 1995 he shared the big screen with fellow heavyweight Robert De Niro for the first time, in Michael Mann's classic crime thriller Heat. The two screen icons have recently been brought together again in Righteous Kill.

Alicia Witt made her film debut at the age of nine in David Lynch's 1984 fantasy epic Dune, and like Leelee Sobieski, has built a varied CV alternating between film and television.

Amy Brenneman is best known for starring roles in television shows Judging Amy and, most recently, Private Practice, although she also co-starred with Pacino in Heat and worked alongside Sylvester Stallone in the disaster flick Daylight.

As an example...

"Why don't you take a good look at your watch. A good look. Now imagine what it would be like to be minutes away from your own death. Do you hear the ticking of a clock and knowing that your time on earth is drawing to a close?" - Jon Forster, [to Jack]

Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars

No chance.

What the others say

"Lacking in tension and pace, poorly edited and starring wholly unsympathetic characters, this is just dull, drab and boring." - Empire

"My guess is that, to get bad performances from this many actors, you have to be a bad director." - Cinematical

So is it any good?

Perhaps Pacino took a wrong turn on the movie lot. Maybe he was heading for a meeting with two-time collaborator Michael Mann to discuss another great project and he took a short cut through the wrong set. Either way, he's ended up headlining what should probably have been a quickly-forgotten slasher starring a bunch of twenty-something pretty faces who you vaguely recognise but can't quite place.

Pacino both literally and figuratively phones-in his performance as psychiatrist Jack Gramm, as a mysterious call on the way to a lecture informs him he has 88 minutes to live. Is this in some way connected to the serial killer who he helped put away who currently sits hours away from his execution? Who knows, and indeed, who cares?

While the unimaginative set-up has already all but confined the film to the bargain-bucket at Blockbuster, the delivery does nothing to salvage proceedings. As it becomes clear that someone close by is planning on doing Gramm in, everyone is suspicious, resulting in an Agatha Christie-lite style that bores and embarrasses.

Pacino is forced to perform every other scene with a phone glued to his ear as screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson tries desperately to forward the plot and force-feed some degree of dramatic impetus into the onscreen in-action. The result confines Amy Brenneman almost exclusively to Gramm's office talking to him through a blue-tooth set-up, while Alicia Witt and Leelee Sobieski are mere window dressing, shifting the genre uneasily into slasher territory with no hope of a satisfying pay-off.

Perhaps released to cash-in on any goodwill arising from Pacino's other Jon Avnet project, Righteous Kill, 88 Minutes is a staggering glitch on the actor's iconic CV.

1/10

Avoid at all costs. Rent Heat to remember the good times.

Nick Goundry

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