{"id":221,"date":"2008-04-20T14:49:12","date_gmt":"2008-04-20T18:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=221"},"modified":"2009-09-09T19:42:23","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T23:42:23","slug":"88-minutes-2007-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=221","title":{"rendered":"88 Minutes (2007) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
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\"Don't

Don't let the poofy hair fool you: 88 Minutes is a fun thrill ride<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s a Madness to his Method<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n

[xrr rating=3\/5]<\/span><\/p>\n

88 Minutes<\/em>. Starring Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, William Forsythe, Deborah Kara Unger, Benjamin McKenzie, Neal McDonough, Leah Cairns, Stephen Moyer, Christopher Redman, Brendan Fletcher, Michael Eklund, Kristina Copeland, and Tammy Hui. Music by Ed Shearmur. Cinematography by Denis Lenoir, A.S.C., A.F.C.\u00a0 Production design by Tracey Gallacher. Costume design by Mary E. McLeod. Edited by Peter E. Berger, A.C.E.\u00a0 Screenplay by Gary Scott Thompson. Directed by Jon Avnet. (Sony TriStar Pictures\/Millennium Films, 2007, Color, 108 minutes. MPAA Rating: R.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0In 88 Minutes<\/em>, Al Pacino confronts a murderer, and he\u2019s only got one question as he tries to find the key to unlock the killer\u2019s twisted thinking. \u201cYou know what I don\u2019t understand? How in God\u2019s name<\/em> does anybody<\/em> give up their free will? How do you do that? You were intelligent<\/em>. You were an individual.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

In a wonderfully over-the-top movie, Pacino delivers a bravura performance as the impossibly GQ forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jack Gramm that plays like a highlight reel of his portrayals of some of the screen\u2019s most manic and memorable characters. Even though he\u2019s closing in on his 70th<\/sup> birthday, Pacino still has a volatile, explosive screen presence that eludes so many actors from younger generations.<\/p>\n

The title refers to a setup not uncommon for this thriller genre: A decade after Gramm\u2019s expert testimony put away sadistic serial rapist and murderer Jon Forster (played with that \u201che acts so cool and rational that he must<\/em> be mad\u201d creepiness by Neal McDonough), the death row inmate is scheduled to be executed. Ah, but not so fast: The mad genius con has a few jokers up his sleeve that he\u2019s been saving for just the right moment to try and bluff his way out of his date with destiny.<\/p>\n

It seems that the prosecution built its case solely around circumstantial evidence, and that it was Dr. Gramm\u2019s testimony, that Forster precisely fit the profile of a serial murderer, that closed the deal with the jury. As Forster\u2019s being led away after sentencing, he intones a message, the meaning of which will be revealed later in the movie\u2019s plot. \u201cTick tock, Doc,\u201d he menacingly whispers in Gramm\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, the cat-and-mouse game begins as one of Jack\u2019s female college students winds up sliced open with an X-acto knife, bound and hung with ropes, as if a sailor or Eagle Scout applied his expertise with knot tying. The savage butchering fits Forster\u2019s M.O. to a T, and suddenly doubt is shed on Forster\u2019s conviction as it appears the Seattle Slayer is once more at large.<\/p>\n

In a cable news interview, Forster questions Gramm\u2019s impartiality, suggesting that the good doctor was a \u201chired gun\u201d with an axe to grind. Watching the videotaped slaying of the recent victim, who pleads with Gramm to let go the innocent man, Forster, right before her demise, even Gramm\u2019s FBI colleagues question his professional integrity. Indignant, Gramm fires back to his FBI partner, \u201cYeah, I have a personal vendetta against him. I also have a personal vendetta against Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and other serial murderers.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he leaves to deliver at lecture, a call comes in on Gramm\u2019s cell phone. A hollow voice from out of the past chillingly taunts him, \u201cTick tock, Doc.\u201d The voice tells him he has only 88 minutes to live. And, as the tagline goes, \u201cJack Gramm only has 88 minutes to solve a murder\u2014his own!\u201d<\/p>\n

Clouds of suspicion gather all around Jack\u2019s colleagues and students. He knows<\/em> that Forster is behind the elaborate scheme to turn his world upside down. But in short order, as precious minutes tick away, he must figure out who\u2019s out to get him. Is it his trusty gal Friday, Shelly (Amy Brenneman), a lipstick lesbian who runs hot and cold? Is it his department chairwoman Carol (Deborah Kara Unger), who\u2019s setting the womanizing Gramm up as revenge for dumping her in favor of hotter, younger, graduate student coeds? Is it graduate students Mike (Benjamin McKenzie) or Lauren (Leelee Sobieski), who themselves have questions about their prof\u2019s veracity? Or, is it his graduate assistant Kim (Alicia Witt), who sheds her leather jacket to reveal a little-left-to-the-imagination camisole once she\u2019s alone with Gramm?<\/p>\n

Every few minutes, just to let him know he\u2019s on a short leash, the disembodied voice calls to update him on how much time he has left to live. As he\u2019s shot at by a mysterious biker, as his apartment fills up with billowing smoke, as his Porsche convertible blows up mere yards away from him, and as freshly-murdered female corpses pop up all over town\u2014with Gramm\u2019s fingerprints and DNA left all over the crime scenes\u2014the cops, the killer, and his world, start closing in on Gramm.<\/p>\n

Critics have universally skewered 88 Minutes<\/em>. Many have dubbed this suspense thriller with that most-reviled of put-downs, \u201cB-Movie.\u201d But that\u2019s what makes this picture: Pacino is obviously having a good time playing Carlito Montana Serpico all over again, as he beds comely vixens more than four decades younger than he. Now that he\u2019s got his much-delayed Oscar, Al Pacino can afford to drop all the Stanislavsky subtlety and give what\u2019s got to be the hammiest movie performance by a Hollywood institution since Gregory Peck\u2019s frenzied turn as evil Nazi geneticist Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sure, it\u2019s got a preposterous script with too many loose threads left untied, a barrel of herring redder than the Canada Post letterboxes that seem out of place in the movie\u2019s Seattle locale (Vancouver stood in as stunt double, as it usually does, for the northwestern American city), and more implausibility than Eli Manning\u2019s miracle pass to David Tyree in the last minutes of Super Bowl XLII, but so did The Big Sleep. <\/em>Aside from overusing the zoom lens early on in the action, 88 Minutes<\/em> is an enjoyable, on-the-edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that\u2019s got the one<\/em> ingredient missing from so many of today\u2019s \u201cmodern noirs,<\/em>\u201d like Memento<\/em>, The Usual Suspects<\/em>, and L.A. Confidential<\/em>. That ingredient is fun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

While I doubt 88 Minutes<\/em> will ever be included in the same league as the three aforementioned indy flicks, that\u2019s its charm. It\u2019s such a novelty to watch a movie that, for once<\/em>, puts its poor sap protagonist through the wringer without putting the theater audience through a veritable film school lecture. Writer Thompson and director Avnet don\u2019t ruin the movie for us by taking every scene and shot so damned seriously<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Like the movie which defined the man-on-the-run solving his own murder genre, D.O.A. <\/em>(the 1950 original version with Edmond O\u2019Brien, not the remake with Dennis Quaid), 88 Minutes <\/em>is full of over-the-top dialogue. At the end of his rope, Pacino bellows at fellow FBI agent (William Forsythe), \u201cCan\u2019t you see this is a frame? What did I do, Frank? Did I blow up my car? Did I fire bullets at myself?<\/em>\u201d Even better, it\u2019s got a bevy of dizzy dames who appear to have been cast and scantily costumed by the suits at FHM<\/em> or Maxim<\/em> magazines.<\/p>\n

Writer Stephen Green describes today\u2019s B-movies as \u201cthe last outpost of individualism in Hollywood.\u201d He writes, \u201cThe advantage of B-movies is that they\u2019re able to slip under the radar of Hollywood\u2019s PC Values Police.\u201d I think what has truly enraged today\u2019s critics is that 88 Minutes<\/em> dared to pass itself off as a genuine A-movie.<\/p>\n

Pacino\u2019s hero Dr. Jack Gramm hardly makes for an acceptable hero by the politically correct crowd: Aside from being an unrepentant womanizer (read: \u201cmisogynist\u201d), Gramm has the audacity to view murderers as evil<\/em>, not adult victims of child abuse. He makes no excuses for their heinous behavior, regarding them not as helpless mental cases but just plain scum.<\/p>\n

As Forster harangues viewers on MSNBC about Gramm\u2019s \u201cpsychobabbling innocent people into the death chamber,\u201d what is so pleasing about Gramm is that his clear-headed analysis of serial murderers is the exact opposite<\/em> of \u201cpsychobabble.\u201d As Gramm informs a student during a lecture, \u201cOf all the serial killers that I\u2019ve interviewed and studied, none of them <\/em>were legally insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

While 88 Minutes <\/em>is not a great movie, it\u2019s a helluva lot better flick than it\u2019s gotten credit for. Leave your staid film theory at the door and make sure to bring plenty of popcorn. In an age in which movies are plumbed to gratuitous levels of manufactured profundity, 88 Minutes<\/em> is as shallow as a kiddie pool\u2014and just as refreshing.<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a Madness to his Method [xrr rating=3\/5] 88 Minutes. Starring Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, William Forsythe, Deborah Kara Unger, Benjamin McKenzie, Neal McDonough, Leah Cairns, Stephen Moyer, Christopher Redman, Brendan Fletcher, Michael Eklund, Kristina Copeland, and Tammy Hui. Music by Ed Shearmur. Cinematography by Denis Lenoir, A.S.C., A.F.C.\u00a0 Production design […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dramas","category-mreview","category-suspense-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":472,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}