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88 Minutes Reviews

Avnet treats his audience like we’ve never seen a thriller before, when really we question if we’ve ever seen one this bad.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/4 | Jun 5, 2024

A film so stuffed with shortcomings that they can't all be addressed in a single review.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | Nov 28, 2020

Razzie Al at his absolute worst.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.0/4.0 | Sep 7, 2020

Pacino is magnetic no matter what he's doing, even if his surroundings aren't quite up to par.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 6, 2019

Lacking tension in its setting and empathy for its characters, 88 Minutes is a woeful excuse of a thriller thanks to the inept direction by Jon Avnet, who has forgotten to inject emotion and thrills in what can only be described as a bloated crime movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jan 3, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 0/5 | Apr 4, 2011

88 Minutes is the sort of overblown thriller in which every action, no matter how insignificant, is pregnant with portent, yet it's a film of nothing but red herrings.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 12, 2009

Don't bother

Full Review | Feb 12, 2009

The overwrought production, sieve-like plot and ludicrous characters merge into something genuinely hilarious. But that's clearly not what cast and crew were going for.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 3, 2008

Ridiculous and ultimately disappointing thriller that stays just about watchable thanks to an amusing pair of performances by Shouty Al and his hairpiece.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 3, 2008

THE WORST FILM OF THE YEAR.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/5 | Oct 3, 2008

Pacino looks half asleep throughout, no doubt concentrating solely on his cheque, while the script is a catalogue of clichés and contrivances.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 3, 2008

Good Sunday afternoon entertainment but it won't hang around the multiplex for long.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 3, 2008

Full of dreadful turns and awful dialogue ("There's been a breach in my most secure area!" mutters Al at one point), 88 Minutes is 107 too long.

It's called Eighty Eight minutes. But, in fact, it's one hundred and seven minutes of your life that you lose should you persevere with this witless thriller.

Interestingly, the more overblown and insincere a performance Pacino delivers in a film, the more self-important and bouffant his hair gets. Here, it's so towering it takes up 90 per cent of the screen.

There are more thrilling ways to spend 88 minutes, like counting from one to 5,208.

Now that this stupendously inept serial-killer flick has slithered into theaters, the diminutive legend had better clear room in his closet for another cinematic skeleton.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/6 | Oct 3, 2008

It verges on so-bad-it's-good territory, but just isn't entertaining enough. Lacking in tension and pace, poorly edited and starring wholly unsympathetic characters, this is just dull, drab and boring.

The kindest thing one can say is that director Jon Avnet and screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson bought a flatpack version of a thriller and then couldn't follow the instructions. Manuals can be confusing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | Oct 2, 2008

88 Minutes (2007)

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Common sense media reviewers.

Serial killer thriller runs out of time, momentum.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Serial killer brutalizes his victims; the hero sle

Serial killings in which women are hung upside dow

Girl shown in bra, panties, and an open robe. Wome

Profanity includes "f--k" (once), "

Mac laptop, Porsche, Nokia phone, MSNBC.

A couple of bar scenes show people drinking beer a

Parents need to know that this dark thriller isn't meant for kids. It focuses on a cat-and-mouse game between a serial killer and the doctor responsible for sending him to death row: The contest is irrational on both sides, leading to aggression and murder. Violent imagery includes women being tortured: The killer…

Positive Messages

Serial killer brutalizes his victims; the hero sleeps with strangers and drinks heavily; students obsess about their teacher. No good characters or role models to be found.

Violence & Scariness

Serial killings in which women are hung upside down from the ceiling and brutalized. Scenes show a victim in her underwear, blood dripping down her neck and splattered on her face; a couple of scenes show a murder in process (scalpel and wheel-cutter are used, and they blood they draw is shown). A couple of audio recordings and one video recording feature women/girls screaming in terror. Classroom discussions of murder and serial killers. Bomb threat at school empties the buildings and creates havoc on campus. A student screams and shows up with bloody nose and scraped face. A car explodes; Gramm is nearly hit by a careening fire truck. Kim and Gramm both carry guns; they're shot at, and Gramm fires back. Gramm shoots his gun near a student's head to scare him. A woman is shot in her chest (bloody), then falls from great height and lands with a thud; blood pools under her head on the ground. Kim describes being "beaten black and blue" by her ex-husband.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Girl shown in bra, panties, and an open robe. Women's corpses wear bras and panties. A naked woman stretches her leg up to her head -- viewers see non-explicit profile from middle distance, emulating Pacino's character's point of view (she's was his one-night stand). Some women briefly show cleavage, including Kim when she tries to seduce Gramm in his apartment. Gramm insists that he doesn't sleep with his students or patients, but the film doesn't confirm this. Shelly, an openly gay character, appears in flashback kissing a woman; no nudity, but the film suggests that she has sex with her. Cops discuss semen in a murder victim's vaginal cavity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Profanity includes "f--k" (once), "damn," "bitch," "s--t," and "hell." A man holds up two fingers at the doctor in anger.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

A couple of bar scenes show people drinking beer and liquor. Gramm has a prominent wine collection.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this dark thriller isn't meant for kids. It focuses on a cat-and-mouse game between a serial killer and the doctor responsible for sending him to death row: The contest is irrational on both sides, leading to aggression and murder. Violent imagery includes women being tortured: The killer likes to leave them hanging upside down in their underwear, blood dripping from deep cuts. Weapons include guns and scalpels. Female characters show lots of skin; at one point, a naked woman appears in in the hero's apartment (nothing explicit is shown). Language includes "f--k" and other profanity. Characters drink, get drunk, and talk about drinking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (1)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

Nine years after his testimony led to the conviction of serial killer Jon Forster ( Neal McDonough ), forensic psychiatrist Jack Gramm ( Al Pacino ) learns that a copycat murder has been committed -- most likely to cast doubt on the conviction and set up a stay of execution. As Forster gives TV interviews from death row, Gramm gets a phone call informing him that he has 88 minutes to live. His investigation (which moves strangely slowly, given the ticking-clock set up) leads to many suspects, including students at the university where he teaches, his teaching assistant Kim ( Alicia Witt ), ethereal colleague Carol (Deborah Kara Unger), and a young man on a motorcycle. The murder scenes are grisly (women hang upside down by one leg, cut with a scalpel so they slowly bleed to death), and Gramm isn't exactly helped along by friend/FBI agent Frank Parks ( William Forsythe ), especially when Gramm is implicated in the latest murder.

Is It Any Good?

Parts of the plot don't make much sense. Given how hectic his supposed last hour-plus on earth becomes, it's a good thing that Gramm has an able assistant, Shelly ( Amy Brenneman ), who keeps track of phone calls, gathers information, and sets up multiple media connections for him. Otherwise he wouldn't survive for 10 minutes, let alone 88. Though he insists he's grateful, Gramm remains annoyingly self-centered and sloppy in his own thinking -- usually his process is translated into clunky, sepia-tinted flashbacks so viewers can follow his process of putting together clues (most of which audiences will already have figured out). He badgers his students, repeatedly puts Kim in danger, and still finds time to help a little old lady -- apparently a sign of his compassion, but it's so incongruous that it seems silly.

But you can see how he might be confused, since Jon Avnet's movie piles on possible suspects while also granting Gramm a clichéd doozy of a motivating trauma: His little sister was brutally hacked to death when she was 12 and he was supposed to be looking after her. To underline his pain (or exacerbate viewers'), the film shows repeated close-ups from crime scenes -- bloody bodies, frightened faces, etc. The camera also tends to careen about, as if the jumpy footage will help convey the threat to Gramm (he's almost hit by a fire truck, he runs across campus and up staircases repeatedly, and he even yells like a crazy man on occasion, so that you'll remember he is, after all, Al Pacino). Still, his focus is Forster, who's up for the contest. They battle it out during a TV interview; Gramm determines to "Get inside his head, make him crack!" but only ends up spewing his own bad-TV version of a crack-up. Sadly, neither man comprehends the lunacy of the plot, leaving that awful knowledge for their audience.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what this movie has in common with other stalker/serial killer movies. What "standards" of the genre does it stick to? What twists does it introduce? Are they believable? Why is Hollywood so fascinated with serial killers? Is there a message in these murderers' madness?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 17, 2008
• On DVD or streaming : September 15, 2008
• Cast : Al Pacino , Alicia Witt , Leelee Sobieski
• Director : John Avnet
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Columbia Tristar
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 108 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : disturbing violent content, brief nudity and language.
• Last updated : May 6, 2024

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• DVD & Streaming
• Drama , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Gramm; Alicia Witt as Kim Cummings; Leelee Sobieski as Lauren Douglas; Amy Brenneman as Shelly Barnes; Neal McDonough as Jon Forster; William Forsythe as Special Agent Frank Parks

Home Release Date

Distributor.

• TriStar Pictures

Movie Review

Dr. Jack Gramm is a brilliant and famous criminal psychologist who’s best known for giving the testimony that put rapist and serial killer Jon Forster behind bars. On the eve of the criminal’s execution, however, another woman is murdered. The victim is tied up with ropes and suspended from the ceiling by one leg—the exact method of torture and rape that Forster was convicted of. The repeated modus operandi raises enough questions that Forster’s lawyers gain an immediate stay of execution for their client.

There are a few more flies in the ointment as well. When the FBI investigates this latest atrocity, agents find physical and DNA evidence that Dr. Gramm was on the scene of the crime. And it turns out the victim was a student of his. That on-scene evidence, Gramm’s past involvement in the Forster case and his reputation as a seducer of young women suddenly make him look pretty suspicious.

The famous doc has friends in the FBI, though, and he’s able to convince them, at least temporarily, that he’s being set up by a copycat murderer. Then, out of the blue, he gets a mysterious call that promises his death in 88 minutes. Suddenly, his students, colleagues and friends all appear to be, potentially, in league against him. Convinced that Forster is orchestrating everything from his death row confinement, Gramm sets out to prove the man’s guilt. Or at the very least, solve his own murder … before the clock runs out.

Positive Elements

In spite of character flaws—particularly his propensity to seduce most of the women around him—Dr. Gramm proves himself to be a relatively good man who will put himself in harm’s way to protect others. He pulls his student, Kim, out of the path of a hurtling motorbike and protects her from an exploding car. He searches for another student’s attacker. He also grabs a rope, and is almost pulled to his death, to save a falling woman.

Dr. Gramm’s executive assistant, Shelly, fears that the doctor won’t be able to forgive her for making a dangerously stupid mistake. He comforts her with, “If I can’t forgive you, Shelly, I don’t deserve you.”

Sexual Content

Dr. Gramm has a one-night fling with a young woman. The next morning he watches her as she stands, naked, holding one leg above her head while brushing her teeth. We see her full profile. And we later see a flashback scene of this same woman revealing her breasts as she drops a top off her shoulders. Kim takes her shirt off in Dr. Gramm’s apartment, revealing a brief, low-cut camisole underneath.

All of the murder victims are young females who’ve been stripped of all their clothing save bra and panties. It’s stated in court that Forster rapes the women he murders, and one dark, shadowy scene hints at his sexual arousal while he’s near one of them.

Shelly says that she let a female student seduce her. We see them kiss. We also see the student kiss another woman.

Violent Content

88 Minutes ‘ violence is visually cryptic, but extremely visceral nonetheless. The most detailed scene shows one of the victims being attacked, drugged and hoisted by one leg with ropes. The killer slowly cuts her thigh with a scalpel. When her sister wakes and stumbles upon the scene, he subdues her as well. And we witness both girls hanging upside down with blood flowing into their faces. While being shown the murders that occur later, we see several different suspended girls from the back and then with blood-covered necks and faces.

In an emotionally pulverizing scene, Dr. Gramm plays a recording of his 12-year-old sister screaming for his help as she’s being abused and murdered.

A killer in a motorcycle helmet shoots a man in the back. And an FBI agent shoots someone through a plate glass window. That person falls seven stories to her death. One student claims to have fought off an attacker, and she has cuts on her face and hands. Blood flows from her nose and mouth. A booby-trapped car erupts in a massive explosion. Kim and Dr. Gramm both have guns, and both brandish them. Someone purposely starts a fire in Dr. Gramm’s apartment building. A bound and bleeding woman is suspended seven stories off the ground.

Crude or Profane Language

Characters use the s-word five times and the f-word once. “H—,” “b–ch” and “d–n” get a workout. God’s and Jesus’ names are both taken in vain���God being combined with “d–n” on at least a half-dozen occasions. A man makes obscene gestures.

Drug and Alcohol Content

During a bar scene (and subsequent flashbacks), Dr. Gramm and a group of his friends and students drink wine and beer along with other forms of alcohol. Dr. Gramm has a large wine rack in his apartment.

The murderer uses an animal tranquilizer called halothane to drug his prey.

Other Negative Elements

It’s implied that Dr. Gramm urged a witness to give false testimony during Forster’s trial.

There’s something appealing about a good movie mystery. It’s particularly fun to apply your deductive reasoning and solve the cinematic puzzle before the hero does. (Especially in those classic pics where a private detective with a fedora pulled down over one eye grumbles out lines like, “The car stuck out like spats at an Iowa picnic.”)

But there’s not much to deduce in 88 Minutes .

The movie does have a consummate actor, Al Pacino, carrying the lion’s share of the dramatic burden for the duration of its grinding 88-plus-20 minutes. The old pro does his gritty method-acting best to keep everything working, but the script is so thin that he sometimes looks a bit silly trying to make it appear weighty.

The whodunit utilizes classic mystery movie-making devices such as a ticking clock and enough storyline red herrings to fill a fish market. A lot of those suspiciously side-glancing characters and dangling plot points, though, add little more than confusion to the tale and just don’t fit together by the final reel.

So instead of making sense, the director settles for titillation and shock by introducing more nearly naked female victims. He tosses in flashbacks of a seductress exposing her breasts and some shots of a blood-dripping scalpel in hopes of keeping the audience distracted from the ugly—it-ain’t-really-workin’—truth. But in doing so, he makes the end product uglier still.

There is indeed something appealing about a good movie mystery. But the operative word is good , a state of being 88 Minutes couldn’t attain in any amount of time, much less in an hour and a half.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Time is of the essence for Al Pacino's Dr. Jack Gramm, a forensic scientist who receives a threatening call on his cell phone informing him he's got all of 88 minutes to live. But a scant hour-and-a-half can seem like a hellish eternity when you've got a nonsensical, exposition-heavy script and stagy directing.

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Time is of the essence for Al Pacino’s Dr. Jack Gramm, a forensic scientist who receives a threatening call on his cell phone informing him he’s got all of 88 minutes to live.

But a scant hour-and-a-half can seem like a hellish eternity when you’ve got a nonsensical, exposition-heavy script (by Gary Scott Thompson) and stagy directing (by Jon Avnet) to work with, not to mention an official running time that actually exceeds the American-German co-production’s real-time gimmick by almost 20 minutes.

The Bottom Line Empty

Made two years ago and already in DVD release in some foreign territories, this ridiculous thriller would be hard-pressed to last much longer than its title in theaters.

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When two copycat killings take place within hours of the scheduled execution of Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), who was found guilty of being the serial killer known as the The Seattle Strangler, the media is beginning to wonder if Gramm’s nine-year-old testimony convicted the right guy.

While Gramm is convinced the grisly killings are the work of a copycat killer, he finds himself with more pressing problems when he receives a personal, time-sensitive death threat from somebody who would appear to be operating within his own circle of colleagues.

As the body count continues to hit ever closer to home, Gramm is required to cut through the mounting paranoia and whittle down the list of potential suspects before it’s too late.

It will actually take a lot less than 88 minutes for most audience members to figure out whodunit thanks to some clunky execution that effectively tips the culprit’s identity within the first half-hour.

The old built-in ticking clock is a trick that can work successfully on a show like “24” or, to a lesser extent, in a film like John Badham’s 1995 thriller, “Nick of Time,” but it requires expert calibration from both the writing and direction to pull it off.

A quickening of pace would also be a prerequisite, but in the case of “88 Minutes” the accompanying action is more of the head-scratching than the pulse-pounding variety.

While Avnet is a filmmaker with a proven strength for character-driven literary drama like “Fried Green Tomatoes,” he seems out of his element here, especially the one provided by Gary Scott Thompson’s ragingly artificial copycat of a copycat killer picture.

Pacino, sporting a wild hairdo and facial hair that seemingly channels the late Wolfman Jack, counts on his old bag of tricks to pump some credibility into his character, but this time they only take him so far.

Also squandered is a talented supporting cast including Alicia Witt, Amy Brenneman and Leelee Sobieski, among the list of possible suspects, who have all, apparently been instructed to overplay their roles on the potentially guilty side.

With something like eight executive producers on board, it’s not surprising that the prevailing visual style would be best described as quick and dirty, with a barely-disguised Vancouver subbing for Seattle.

88 MINUTES TriStar Pictures A TriStar Pictures and Millennium Films presentation of a Randall Emmett/George Furla production for Equity Pictures Medienfonds GmbH & KG III and Nu Image Entertainment GmbH. Credits: Director: Jon Avnet Writer: Gary Scott Thompson Producers: Jon Avnet, Randall Emmett, Gary Scott Thompson, Avi Lerner Executive producers: Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson, George Furla, Andreas Thiesmeyer, Josef Lautenschlager, Lawrence Bender, John Baldecchi Director of photography: Denis Lenoir Production designer: Tracey Gallacher Music: Edward Shearmur Co-producers: Michael Flannigan, John Thompson, Samuel Hadida, Marsha Oglesby, Jochen Kamlah, Gerd Koechlin, Manfred Heid Costume designer: Mary McLeod Editor: Peter Berger Cast: Jack Gramm: Al Pacino Kim Cummings: Alicia Witt Lauren Douglas: Leelee Sobieski Shelly Barnes: Amy Brenneman Carol Lynn Johnson: Deborah Kara Unger Benjamin McKenzie: Mike Stempt Jon Forster: Neal McDonough Running time — 106 minutes MPAA rating: R

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Time Out says

All great actors have films they’d rather forget, and Al Pacino isn’t exempt from starring in his share of embarrassments; kudos to the Pacinophiles who brave Revolution or Two for the Money and still retain their fandom. Now that this stupendously inept serial-killer flick has slithered into theaters, the diminutive legend had better clear room in his closet for another cinematic skeleton. Notice how we didn’t call the movie a thriller, as that would suggest there were actual thrills in store. All you’ll get out of this disaster is slack-jawed amazement that everyone involved could keep a straight face.

As hotshot forensic psychiatrist Jack Gramm, Pacino—armed with a three-inches-high-and-rising bouffant—is told via cell phone that he’s got a limited time to live (see title). The threatening calls are payback for putting a murderer (McDonough) on death row, as well as a convenient excuse for Gramm and his luxurious coif to run around Seattle. As for Pacino’s personal agenda, it primarily involves the star testing his Pixies School of Acting technique (go instantly from soft whisper to banshee scream) against a host of unlucky B actors.

Compared with Jon Avnet ’s barely functional directing and the ripened dialogue, Pacino’s phoned-in turn hardly qualifies as a cardinal sin. Yet the former poster boy for Method intensity is testing his luck; car wrecks like these can maim even the sturdiest of screen phoenixes. Given its star treatment here, however, his hair still has a bright future.

Cast and crew

• Director: Jon Avnet
• Screenwriter: Gary Scott Thompson
• Neal McDonough
• Alicia Witt
• Leelee Sobieski
• Amy Brenneman
• William Forsythe
• Deborah Kara Unger
• Brendan Fletcher

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Cottonshirt, l pacino grows up, but sadly doesn't do sad very well.

4 October 2008 9:09AM

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By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Try as he might to "hoo-ha" some life into this stupendously stupid thriller, Al Pacino can't disguise the desperation of this CSI wanna-be. As Jack Gramm, an FBI forensic shrink who also teaches at a Seattle university, Pacino must ward off a horny student (Alicia Witt), a serial killer (Neal McDonough) on death row who arranges a string of copycat murders to win a reprieve, and a mystery caller who warns him he has only eighty-eight minutes to live. Sounds like a full day, what with Jack's semen found in the vaginal cavity of a murdered call girl. But I'm guessing it's the pressure of an idiot script by Gary Scott Thompson and understandably clueless direction from Jon Avnet that forces Pacino to ham it up so vigorously that you want to garnish him with cloves and a slice of pineapple.

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88 Minutes Reviews

• 17   Metascore
• 1 hr 48 mins
• Drama, Suspense
• Watchlist Where to Watch

After receiving a call claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, a forensic psychiatrist and college professor races against time to stay alive and find the caller. Al Pacino stars in this involving mystery thriller filled with twists and turns. Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, William Forsythe, Deborah Kara Unger. Directed by Jon Avnet.

Gary Scott Thompson and Jon Avnet's twisty tale of a forensic psychiatrist given 88 minutes to live by a shadowy sociopath might have made an entertainingly direct-to-DVD B-movie thriller with the courage of its sleazy convictions. But expectations are different for a theatrical feature starring Al Pacino, and by those standards it's a preposterous misfire. Nine years ago, Jack Gramm's (Pacino) testimony helped put Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) on death row for the torture killing of Joanie Cates (Vicky Huang). Dubbed the "Seattle Slayer," Forster always maintained his innocence, claiming both that Gramm lied under oath and that forensic psychiatry is voodoo science. On the eve of Forster's execution, the Seattle police discover a crime scene with all his trademarks: Is it the work of a copycat killer, or was Forster wrongly convicted? Worse still, the victim was one of Gramm's Northwest Washington University students; the FBI has picked up on rumors that he was sleeping with her, and the killer taped her pleading with him to admit that he falsified testimony. Shortly after, Gramm receives a phone call telling him he's going to die in 88 minutes. Over the course of the next hour and a half, Gramm is threatened, attacked and finds himself suspected of two gruesome murders. He becomes convinced that his tormentor must be someone close to him who's inexplicably conspiring to help Forster get a stay of execution and maybe even a new trial. Could it be Gramm's assistant, Shelly (Amy Brenneman)? Perhaps one of his students, like whip-smart Lauren (Leelee Sobieski) or sullen Mike (Benjamin McKenzie)? How about his teaching assistant, Kim (Alicia Witt), or maybe her ex-husband (Stephen Moyer), who did time at Walla Walla Prison -- where Forster is confined -- and has been lurking around a lot recently? Maybe Dean Johnson (Deborah Kara Unger), who seems to resent Gramm, or the creepy campus security guard (Brendan Fletcher) fascinated by serial killers? But as evidence against Gramm mounts, even his old friend, Agent Frank Parks (William Forsythe), begins to wonder whether he's become a murderer. Thompson supplies plot twists galore, none of which make a lick of sense: The 11th-hour -- sorry, 86th minute -- revelation of the killer's real identity is truly groan-inducing. 88 MINUTES opened in the U.S. a full year after its DVD release in several territories, and marked a low point in Pacino's career -- physical as well as artistic, in that every woman in the cast towers over him.

Columbia

88 Minutes Review

03 Oct 2008

107 minutes

It can’t be easy being Al Pacino; knowing that, no matter what you do, there’s little chance it will live up to The Godfather, Serpico or Heat. Still, that’s no reason to make dross that wouldn’t live up to Gigli. Surely even a glance at this script would have revealed that the film would be an overblown, tangled mess with more than a hint of misogyny about it? It was certainly evident to the kind-hearted studio exec who shelved it for two years. The question is, which wiseguy decided to dust it off and release it?

Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a cocksure forensic psychiatrist of the sort that largely died out when thrillers became a little bit cleverer after the ’80s finished. He sleeps with women 40 years younger than him, but that’s okay because he has a Tragedy In His Past. One of his great successes was the conviction of serial killer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) but a series of copycat killings calls Forster’s conviction into doubt and Gramm’s professionalism into question. Did Gramm lie under oath? Does he have a personal vendetta? Do you care?

To add to Gramm’s woes, he’s framed for the new murders and told that he only has 88 minutes to live by an anonymous caller with detailed knowledge of his Past Tragedy. Pacino reacts to this with all the urgency of Rip Van Winkle, and spends the next hour tracking down apparently unconnected leads, spending 90 per cent of his time on the phone (not thrilling) and reacting in mute astonishment as Mr. Anonymous delivers further reminders of his imminent fate.

Everyone here, even Pacino, appears to have been told to act like Miss Marple houseguests, throwing significant glares from beneath lowered brows. Deborah Kara Unger makes the most sinister impression per minute of screentime, but Leelee Sobieski is the most laughably suspicious, with the other women (Benjamin McKenzie is the token suspicious male) circling Pacino’s possibly corrupt hero only to be horribly killed, tied to a chair or condemned to pointlessness. Perhaps we are meant to deduce that, in this world, no-one’s hands are clean. What we in fact conclude is that poor direction has caused a massive outbreak of over-acting.

88 Minutes (Germany/United States, 2007)

It's always a shock when a movie turns out to be this bad. It's an even bigger shock when it features an actor of the caliber and reputation of Al Pacino. 88 Minutes is one of the dumbest thrillers to arrive it theaters in a long time, so it's no surprise that it has been lingering on Columbia's shelves for more than a year. (It came out on DVD in Germany early in 2007.) The screenplay is credited to Gary Scott Thompson, but could have been written by a trained chimpanzee employing a "dial-a-cliché" computer program. Director Jon Avent gets into the general sense of badness by mangling continuity and Pacino does his part by sleepwalking his way through the role. The rest of the actors follow suit.

There's a certain compulsion that accompanies watching something as moronic as 88 Minutes . You know the experience is causing brain rot but you need to keep viewing to see just how ridiculous things will get. To the extent that this sort of masochistic exercise is the reason to sit through the movie, the ending does not disappoint. 88 Minutes saves the worst for last. And when I write "worst," I mean "worst." This movie doesn't settle for the mere mediocrity into which so many thrillers lie; it careens into a free-fall early in the proceedings and doesn't hit bottom until the end credits are ready to roll.

Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a world-renowned forensic psychiatrist who acts more like a cop or a P.I. than a shrink. He's frequently engaging in foot chases, waving around his i.d. like a badge, and being called in for consultations by the FBI. Typical psychiatrist stuff. He's also a party animal, having sex with any woman who smiles at him as long as she's not his gay assistant (Amy Brenneman), a student, or a patient. That rules out his T.A. Kim (Alicia Witt) as a bed-partner, even though she has the hots for him. So instead of sleeping with him, she spends the entire movie trailing after him asking inane questions and making obvious observations. Dr. Watson she is not. More like Ms. Plot Exposition.

The story revolves around a death row inmate named Jon Forster, who's getting ready to die by lethal injection as a result of Gramm's testimony. We don't actually hear the testimony but one can surmise it contained a few hoo-has since the jury convicted based almost exclusively on it. There's really no question of the man's innocence, though, since he's played by Neal McDonough, one of those actors who always gets the wacko/creep part. However, while Forster is behind bars figuring out what to order for his last meal, a copycat is at work on the streets of Seattle. Then Gramm gets a call from a Darth Vader-like voice (without the heavy breathing) informing him that he only has 88 minutes left to live. At that point, the movie shifts into real-time mode, although Jack Bauer does not make an appearance. (Wouldn't want to upstage Pacino any more than the Seattle scenery is doing.) Clues start showing up pointing to Gramm being involved in the recent spree of killings. So is the villain planning to kill him or frame him?

To be fair to Pacino, he's an arresting presence even when he's not trying - and he most definitely is not trying here. Still, not even he can pull off some of the lame dialogue he's saddled with. However, compared with the lines Alcia Witt has to deliver, Pacino is spouting Shakespeare. Witt does what one might reasonably expect from a competent actress under these circumstances: say the words without choking on them or laughing out loud. It's hard to write too unkindly about her performance when she is so spectacularly outshone in the bad acting department by Deborah Kara Unger, William Forsythe, and Leelee Sobieski. (Between this and her appearance for Uwe Boll, one has to wonder what happened to her career.)

Even though the plot is littered with more red herrings than a fish market, it's not difficult to figure out who the surprise secret villain is. The story's clumsy attempts to hide his/her identity serve only to highlight the guilty party. I suppose someone who has never seen a thriller/mystery might be shocked by the climactic unveiling. In his desperate attempts to confuse things and include as many twists as the running time will allow, screenwriter Thompson has left behind so many holes and dead-ends that the movie never seems to make much sense even when it's trying to be straightforward.

If it wasn't for Pacino's involvement, 88 Minutes would have landed directly on the DVD shelves, bypassing movie critics and theaters altogether. Columbia Pictures is banking on Pacino being a big enough draw that people won't care much about the lobotomized screenplay, the plastic acting, the incoherent direction and editing, and the overlong running time (88 minutes + a 20 minute prologue). Judging by what's been making money at the box office recently, the cynic in me must concede that they may be right.

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MOVIE REVIEW: 88 MINUTES 04/16/08

SYNOPSIS: In 88 Minutes, Al Pacino stars as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he must use all his skills and training to narrow down the possible suspects, who include a disgruntled student, a jilted former lover, and a serial killer who is already on death row, before his time runs out.

REVIEW: The critics are killing this movie and I don�t agree. Sure the script was average at best, the performances lacked intensity, the movie was longer than 88 minutes which is all it needed, the story was a bit weak, and the climax was nonchalant, but it was still entertaining and it has a decent cast. Hmmm, sounds like I�m contradicting myself, doesn�t it? But really, I was in shock when I saw the other scores for this movie. It�s really not that bad. It�s a typical whodunit thriller that does a good job of keeping you involved with constant twists and turns. Almost everybody is a suspect. Al Pacino plays a highly revered forensic psychiatrist and college professor, Dr. Jack Gramm, who oozes a larger than life attitude . . . or is that Al being Al, not sure. He has had the power to influence the jury in many court cases by simply and convincingly giving his testimony. But what if he were wrong, imagine the consequences. This movie explores that possibility and keeps you second guessing as to where the guilt lies. "Tick, tock, Doc" is the theme of the film as provided by Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), one of the victims of Jack�s power who was incarcerated for rape, murder and everything in between. This was definitely not one of Al�s better performances. He was sharp and cold, but too cold, almost unaffected and unemotional. The fact that it was Al Pacino playing this character had more influence than his acting. The rest of the cast, although talented and even with Al not at top form, remained in his shadow and weren�t able to stand out. Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, Deborah Kara Unger, William Forsythe, and Neal McDonough are some of the more popular names that compose this well-stocked cast. They all did okay but their intensity levels fell short for this kind of film. The characters they were playing didn�t help too much either because they were underdeveloped and intentional. The look of the movie kept pace with Dr. Gramm as he scurried around Seattle trying to solve this mystery before his 88 minutes were up. There was plenty of rain and dreariness (typical Seattle) to help set the tone and the various locations were well used. The best part of this film would have to be the suspense in trying to figure out who was behind it all. That part of the storyline was well done. Director Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, Up Close & Personal) hadn�t directed a major motion picture in quite a while. He has done plenty of TV work though, and it shows as this movie is slightly better than an episode of any of those crime related TV shows (there are so many to choose from, and Priscilla is quite addicted to them). And yet, the last suspense thriller that I saw that can be best compared to this one was Untraceable and I liked this one a little more.

Review By Cine Marcos   [email protected]

People Movie Review 88 Minutes

SMARTCINE.COM

CRITICS REVIEWS & SCORES

"Hit and Miss"

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

What You Need To Know:

(B, Ho, LLL, VV, S, NN, A, D, M) Light moral worldview in mystery story about bringing serial killer and his possible cohort(s) to justice, plus protagonist’s secretary says she is a lesbian and viewers see her with another woman in one scene; very strong foul language includes about 25 obscenities (including two or three possible “f” word), 12 strong profanities and eight light exclamatory profanities; strong violence with a few drips of blood shown in about three scenes includes serial killers shown cutting about two arms or legs of female victims with a line of blood dripping but movie otherwise just implies he has done worse things to them to kill them, serial killers drug women and then hang them from a ceiling or (in one case) a steel beam of a building, killer shot to death, car bombed and explodes, chase scenes, gunfire between killer and other people in one scene, and women has slight wounds from allegedly being mugged; implied fornication and implied homosexuality; brief rear and upper female nudity in two separate scenes, plus brief upper male nudity in one scene; alcohol use; smoking and women victims drugged; and, deceit and protagonist framed for murders.

More Detail:

88 MINUTES is a hit-and-miss mystery thriller. It has an exciting finish, but the rest of the movie is all over the place, with some bad dialogue and superficial plotting.

Al Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a celebrated forensic psychologist at a Seattle university who receives a cryptic phone call saying that he has only 88 minutes to live. Gramm thinks the person engineering the call is a brutal serial killer named Jon Forster that Gramm put in jail years ago. Forster faces state execution at midnight for his crimes. The discovery of two copycat murders puts Gramm’s testimony against Forster in doubt. Even worse, the killer has put evidence at the crime scenes linking Gramm to the new copycat murders. Gramm races to expose Forster’s link to the new crimes and stop the person who’s committing the crimes for Forster and framing Gram.

88 MINUTES suffers from too many characters and inconsistent direction and dialogue. For example, Gramm interacts with one of the murder victims before she dies as well as with two female graduate students, the female dean of his university department, and his female secretary. All of these women become part of the mystery surrounding Gramm’s phone calls and the new murders. And, one of the women has a jealous ex-husband who becomes part of the mystery. If that’s not enough, viewers learn that Gramm’s obsession with serial killers began when one serial killer murdered his younger sister. There is also a frenetic sub-plot involving Gramm’s FBI contact, who begins to doubt Gramm’s character. Some of the scenes between these characters are overwrought with sometimes-silly dialogue. The exciting finish almost makes up for these problems, but not quite.

Regarding the movie’s content, 88 MINUTES has plenty of strong foul language. There are also violent scenes with drips of blood of women being attacked, but the woman avoids extremely graphic images. The movie also implies an evening of sex between Dr. Gramm and the first female victim. That said, the movie’s protagonist, Dr. Gramm, is a man on a moral mission – to put serial killers in jail, preferably on death row. The movie leaves viewers guessing whether this is actually true, but, in the end, the movie sides with that moral position. Thus, 88 MINUTES has a light moral worldview, but not a religious one with references to God or Jesus Christ. All in all, therefore, viewers probably should exercise extreme caution when it comes to 88 MINUTES.

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

Avnet treats his audience like we’ve never seen a thriller before, when really we question if we’ve ever seen one this bad.

A film so stuffed with shortcomings that they can't all be addressed in a single review.

Razzie Al at his absolute worst.

Pacino is magnetic no matter what he's doing, even if his surroundings aren't quite up to par.

Lacking tension in its setting and empathy for its characters, 88 Minutes is a woeful excuse of a thriller thanks to the inept direction by Jon Avnet, who has forgotten to inject emotion and thrills in what can only be described as a bloated crime movie.

88 Minutes is the sort of overblown thriller in which every action, no matter how insignificant, is pregnant with portent, yet it's a film of nothing but red herrings.

Don't bother

The overwrought production, sieve-like plot and ludicrous characters merge into something genuinely hilarious. But that's clearly not what cast and crew were going for.

Ridiculous and ultimately disappointing thriller that stays just about watchable thanks to an amusing pair of performances by Shouty Al and his hairpiece.

Additional Info

• Genre : Drama, Thriller
• Release Date : April 18, 2008
• Languages : English, Spanish
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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There are enough interesting ideas and at least two confident performances holding “A Quiet Place: Day One” together, even if it sometimes feels like a first draft of a richer, more complex final film. “Pig” director Michael Sarnoski proves deft at the kind of melancholic, subtle character beats usually lacking in these blockbusters. But he lacks the skill set for action, an essential aspect of a film like this: the setpieces feel too imprecise, and the stakes never high enough to produce actual tension. Still, what could have been a cash grab clearly has loftier aspirations, resulting in a film that’s never boring and just provocative enough to spark big questions about what truly matters in this world when it’s falling apart.

The always-great Lupita Nyong’o plays Sam, a hospice stage cancer patient who agrees to a trip into Manhattan for a show with her support group, led by a bearded Alex Wolff (who also starred in “Pig”). The puppet show they attend is fine, but she’s really there for a slice of NY pizza, knowing that it’s likely the last time she will have a chance to taste something she so clearly associates with happiness. Making Sam an end-stage cancer patient adds an interesting layer to the horror that unfolds. How hard do you fight to live when you’re already dying? It’s only one of several intriguing ideas that Sarnoski’s film walks up to but then runs away too quickly, retreating into the thin structure of a survival thriller.

Another big question is, how do you silence one of the loudest cities in the world? Sarnoski’s film informs us that NYC is regularly 90 decibels, setting the stage for a movie about how a city filled with that much hustle and bustle stays quiet. But this isn’t that movie. We never get the sense we’re in a crowded city on the first day of the end of the world, as Sarnoski can’t hide that his film didn’t shoot in Manhattan (it was shot on London soundstages). This makes it feel more like sets than a lived-in reality.

We follow Sam and her movie-stealing cat, Frodo, through this landscape until they’re joined by a panicking young man named Eric ( Joseph Quinn of “Stranger Things”). Casting Nyong’o and Quinn proves half the battle with “Day One,” as their extremely expressive faces are forced to do a lot of heavy lifting as the sound-sensitive aliens take over the world around them. They both give strong genre performances, conveying most of the story through pure physicality and expression.

The problem is there’s too little story to tell. Early on, we meet Henri ( Djimon Hounsou ), a character from “A Quiet Place: Part II"; he gets one of the best scenes in the movie as a man goes into a panic attack in front of him and his son. What would you do? How far would you go to silence a man who might put your family in jeopardy? Would you kill him? It’s a beat that gets a nice callback later when Eric’s panic starts to rise, and we wonder if Sam may have to ask the same questions, but it feels too shallowly developed. Almost every thematic aspect of “Day One” feels hurried, a pace that could be why the once-attached Jeff Nichols left the project over creative differences. It’s hard to believe in the era of bloated blockbusters, but this one should have been longer; its 99 minutes don’t allow for enough character investment, world-building, or actual tension.

Yet Sarnoski’s obvious gift for nuance comes through in a few beats. He directs Nyong’o and Quinn to very solid performances with almost no dialogue, but one wishes he could have found a co-director who could give “Day One” a bit more visual style and substance. When the aliens are doing their thing, “Day One” falls into a gap between realism and action, never feeling genuinely tense but never quite like a big-budget blockbuster. The minor beats in “Day One” – kids hiding in a fountain to disguise their noise, Eric emerging from a flooded subway, a hand over a screaming mouth, Quinn & Nyong’o’s amazing eyes – elevate it above creatively bankrupt sequels. This is not that. It’s got too much going for it to write it off that cynically. Just don’t expect anyone to defend it too loudly, either.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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The way the film presents it, it’s Maxine’s hunger for stardom, her hellbent wish to lift herself out of the trough of the sex industry, that sets her apart. That and her inner fire. And inner fire, as we know from “Pearl,” is something that Mia Goth can really bring. She plays Maxine with a come-hither aggression that’s direct and compelling enough to let us wonder if Maxine could be hardcore porn’s hidden answer to Vivien Leigh.

When a filmmaker recreates an old genre, to the point that it’s obvious he has steeped himself in it, it’s generally a sign that he’s aiming high, trying to make “cinema.” That’s certainly true of Ti West. In his up-from-low-budget-gone-A24 way, he’s as obsessed with old movies as Quentin Tarantino; he riffs on them as a fetishistic act of cult homage. But just as Tarantino can draw on the lowest of grindhouse muck, West, in “Maxxxine,” applies his genre-movie scholasticism to a form that seems, on the face of it, to be the definition of disreputable: the ’80s sexploitation thriller — the kind of badly lit product, featuring women in heavy-metal lingerie and psycho stalkers who are like leering stand-ins for the men in the audience, that no one ever pretended was any good. De Palma drew on some of these films too, but “Maxxxine” is less contempo De Palma than a knowing nod to the movies you used to see stacked up in VHS bargain bins in convenience stores.

The trick is this. West wants to pay homage to their utter junkiness — and, at the same time, to make a version of one of them that’s ironically “good.” He wants to do for scuzzbucket ’80s sex-and-horror schlock what Tarantino did for Hollywood drive-in pulp. “Maxxxine” is a grisly exploitation thriller set between quotation marks, with an anachronistically empowered heroine at its center.

Early on, Maxine is working behind the plastic glass of the Show World emporium, where she puts on three-minute private performances for customers, when the killer comes in, dressed in shiny black leather from his hat to his gloves. He’s been looking for Maxine — and his reaction, as he tears the wooden frame off the inside of the booth, references both “Hardcore” and “Manhunter.”

Is he the Night Stalker? That’s the serial killer who terrorized L.A. for a year during the mid-’80s, and “Maxxxine” includes this true-life monster in its fictional universe. That sounds creepy, but this is the sort of slasher pastiche that uses random killers for suspenseful convenience. Early on, Maxine is walking home when she’s trapped against a chain-link fence in an alleyway by another psycho with a knife. They’re everywhere! The fact that he’s dressed like Buster Keaton is a funny touch, and Maxine, pulling a gun, makes him strip and teaches him a feminist lesson he won’t soon forget. All of that makes the scene amusing. Yet the garish coincidence of it all, the atmosphere of Jack-in-the-box violence, is tawdry in the extreme.

His A ideas include deconstructing how Hollywood degrades women, even as they’re at the center of everything it’s selling. That means tracing the invisible connections between mainstream Hollywood, Z-movie Hollywood, and the sex industry (the cinematic patriarchy), all cemented by the references that starlets keep making to some “party in the Hills” — that mythic sought-after power bash where a wannabe can meet the producer or director who will change her life, or maybe the sugar daddy who will take care of her, or both in one.

West makes colorful use of the Hollywood sign, the sleazy hurly-burly of Hollywood Boulevard, and, in a key scene, the set of the “Psycho” house (which, as the “Psycho” sequels demonstrated, is utterly demystified when it’s shot in color and used as a B-movie prop). Kevin Bacon shows up as a private detective who’s actually working for the killer, and Bacon, with several gold teeth, chewing on a gumbo-thick New Orleans drawl, has so much fun playing a character who’s like Jake Gittes scripted by Abel Ferrara that you go with it, assuming (or hoping) that he’ll deepen the intrigue. And Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan, as quarrelsome homicide-cop partners, demonstrate how much Ti West’s casting clout has increased since “Pearl.” There’s a scratchy piece of VHS evidence: a copy of the porn film, entitled “The Farmer’s Daughters,” that Maxine was shooting in “X.” That film has disappeared, but it could now result in placing her at the site of an unsolved murder.

The screwy power of “Pearl” was its off-center ambiguity: the way it made Pearl a scary killer. “Maxxxine,” diverting as the film can be when it’s reveling in midnight ’80s nostalgia, has a moral structure that’s both more traditional and creakier — noble heroine in peril (even if she did once kill in self-defense), evil sicko lingering in the shadows. When we’re finally hit with the revelation of who the killer is, it’s supposed to be the Babylon heart of darkness. But instead you just think, “Sorry, I’m not buying that for a moment. Especially given the prices of homes in the Hollywood Hills.” Ti West is a good filmmaker, but it may be time for him to stop reconfiguring trash. He needs to try embedding A ideas in an A-movie.

Reviewed at Dolby 88, June 18, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 103 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release of an IPR.VC, Motel Mojave, Access Entertainment production. Producers: Jacob Jaffke, Ti West, Kevin Turen, Harrison Kreiss, Mia Goth. Executive producers: Timo Argillander, Andrea Scarso, Len Blavatnik, Danny Cohen, Jeremy Reitz, Peter Phok, Sam Levinson, Ashley Levinson.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Ti West. Camera: Eliot Rockett. Editor: Ti West. Music: Tyler Bates.
• With: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Kevin Bacon, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Prast, Zachary Mooren.

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An Appraisal

Donald Sutherland Didn’t Disappear Into Roles, and That Was a Good Thing

The actor understood the range of human feeling, but he came of age when movies distrusted institutions, and that suspicion was part of his arsenal.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

In a 2014 interview in GQ, the actor Donald Sutherland recalled that a movie producer told him he wasn’t getting a role he’d auditioned for because “we’ve always thought of this as a guy-next-door sort of character, and we don’t think you look like you’ve ever lived next door to anybody.”

It’s true: In film and TV roles that stretched over 60 years, Sutherland, who died Thursday at 88 , never radiated the sense that he was some random guy you might cross paths with at the grocery store. If you did, you’d remember him, maybe a little uneasily. With a long face, piercing blue eyes, perpetually curled upper lip and arched, wary eyebrows, he had the look of someone who knew something important — a useful characteristic in a career that often involved movies about paranoia and dark secrets. His voice could clear a range from excitedly high to a menacing bass that would make you feel like ducking for cover.

As an actor, he could do it all. His turn as the titular private detective opposite Jane Fonda in Alan Pakula’s 1971 “Klute” rides a tricky knife’s edge — is he a good guy? Does that term have a meaning in this case? There’s his role as a slowly more horrified scientist in Philip Kaufman’s 1978 “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and his movie-stealing monologue as Mr. X in Oliver Stone’s 1991 “J.F.K.,” loaded with the urgency of obsession. Even when playing a goofball — the womanizing prankster surgeon Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s 1970 “M*A*S*H,” for instance, or Vernon L. Pinkley in Robert Aldrich’s 1967 “The Dirty Dozen” — his loping, laconic figure stood out against the background, someone who knew a little better than he let on.

Sutherland worked constantly and, unlike some actors of his generation, never really seemed like he belonged to a single era. He’d already been at it for more than 40 years when he showed up in Joe Wright’s 2005 “Pride and Prejudice,” in what seemed like a minor part: Mr. Bennet, put-upon father to five daughters in yet another adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel. In the book, he’s sardonic and contemptuous of all but his oldest two daughters, Jane and Lizzy; the reader doesn’t walk away with particularly warm feelings about him.

But Sutherland’s version of Mr. Bennet was a revelation, without being a deviation. In a scene granting Lizzy (Keira Knightley) his blessing to marry her beloved Mr. Darcy, tears sparkle in his eyes, which radiate both love and, crucially, respect for his headstrong daughter. Suddenly this father was not just a character, but a person — a man who can see his daughter’s future in a moment and is almost as overcome as she is.

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