88 Minutes
Posted on April 18, 2008 at 7:24 am
C-| Lowest Recommended Age: | Adult |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for disturbing violent content, brief nudity and language. |
| Profanity: | Very strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, including drinking to excess, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Serial killer who tortures and rapes his victims, grisly and graphic images, guns, bomb, knives |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | April 19, 2008 |
This non-thrilling thriller is so full of howlers and slippery plot holes that it should slide off the screen, which would be a relief to everyone there. It is at least 88 minutes too long.
Al Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a forensic psychiatrist-as-rock-star type who is a major celebrity and has a big fancy office and what appears to be an even bigger and fancier apartment. On the day that a serial killer he helped to convict is to be executed, he gets a call on his cell phone, telling him he has 88 minutes to live. Tick Tock. That’s a quote.
If you eliminate the first 88 things a rational person would do after receiving such a call, you might come up with the boneheaded shenanigans that follow as Gramm and his trusty (OR ARE THEY????) teaching assistant Kim (Alicia Witt) and office sidekick Shelley (Amy Brenneman) race around Vancouver (pretending to be Seattle) trying to figure out who might be behind all of this. Meanwhile, they struggle with clunky dialogue and a soundtrack that seems to have been lifted from some Quinn Martin production of the 1970’s. The outcome is both predictable and boring. And the movie is far too infatuated with the torture scenes so that we begin to wonder whose side it is on.
This is a huge waste of top talent and a huge waste of time for anyone unlucky enough to buy a ticket.
You’re far too kind with your letter grade! Hoo-ah! Didn’t the voice on the phone sound like the puppet in “Saw?”
As a psychiatrist, who has not seen the movie, I wish Hollywood would stop portraying psychiatrists as rich people with big houses and offices. The reality is that our specialty is the least paid (right there with pediatrics) and a lot of us end up treating the mentally ill for free. This we do for the benefit of society, but if Hollywood really wants to help out, make a movie about the condition of our state mental hospitals and the needed psychiatric care for our veterans and homeless! Annonymous.
Okay the movie really had some moments but not realistic AT ALL! I mean come on with everything he did in the movie with driving and all would take hours, non the less 88 minutes. It really wasn’t believable and you could almost see the ending coming from the beginning.