Review: 88 Minutes (2007)

As it meanders towards a conclusion of such inanity it deserved to be
relegated to the barren wasteland of straight-to-DVD releases (rather
than simply being consecutively pushed back from release), Jon Avnet's
88 Minutes imagines 24 in an even more limited time frame, where sense
and narrative flow are, like the Al Pacino's victim to a faceless
tormentor giving him only eighty-eight minutes to live, simply lost.
By the time the non-too-shocking twist conclusion, which seems to
spring direct out of a bad James Patterson novel (as in anything post-
Cat and Mouse), its fate as already been pretty much sealed.

Here's an ill-inspired, gimmicky little thriller short on intelligence
and even shorter on the would-be requisite thrills of the genre, its
screenplay amounting only to a joyless slog through cliches and
convention where the featured criminal outside of the present-time
race for life Pacino's Dr. Jack Gramm now faces is Neal McDonough's
(he of the borderline-iconic I Know Who Killed Me catastrophe) high-
camp portrayal of convicted psychopath (or is he?) Jon Forster. His
playing part in such a waste of celluloid doesn't come as a surprise,
though its disappointing to see someone like Al Pacino relegated to
this level of inept filmmaking.

As Gramm races literally against time, his agony feels like a
prolonged one to us, not least because the film's running time
stretches a good distance beyond eighty-eight minutes. It partly makes
up for its grand inanity via a few technically proficient sequences,
all of which are nonetheless overshadowed by the film's worst. Or its
worst traits in general, as the connection of the number 88 to the
death of his sister feels like a gimmick regardless of director
Avnet's intention. Again, why is Al Pacino wasting his time here?

Well... Pacino's performance itself isn't anywhere close to his best,
simply a disinterested stroll through material he probably had only
monetary interest in to begin with. Joining him on the film's iffy
cast list are a string of once-promising thespians, like Leelee
Sobieski and Alicia Witt, playing stock roles designed only to arouse
suspicion. With its few pleasures (so indistinct as they are that
they've all pretty much faded from my memory), "88 Minutes" seemed
like it might have made a middle-of-the-road if worthless TV
production, though its conclusion, borrowing heavily from the
pantomime's "he's behind you" formula, proves to be that proverbial
nail in the coffin.