88 Minutes is a formula thriller, and as far as we can make out, that formula is 8 minutes of good stuff and 80 minutes of useless crap filler, same formula used in that tasty orange fake cheese spread in a jar. Which we can't name.
Al Pacino stars in 88 Minutes as forensic psychologist Jack Gramm. The movie opens in the late 1990s, with women in Seattle being sliced and diced by a serial killer. Someone is arrested for the crimes, and Dr. Gramm's expert testimony helps win our serial killer the death penalty.
Flash-forward nine years, to the present day. The killer (Neal McDonough) is still on death row, but the day has come for his execution. Dr. Gramm, meanwhile, continues to lecture graduate students, consult on murders and go about his life in Seattle, but women are still turning up mutilated and dead in his city.
Is there a copycat killer, or did he help convict the wrong guy all those years ago?
Dr. Gramm does not doubt himself for a second, but then he gets a disturbing phone call, telling him he has 88 minutes to live. Six minutes later, he gets another call telling him he has 82 minutes to live. Three minutes after that, he gets another call telling him he has 79 minutes to live.
The idea may be to bore him to death.
What follows are bomb scares, mysterious visitors, mysterious packages, a mysterious guy on a motorcycle, mysterious flashbacks, mysterious messages, mysterious phone calls, exploding things, and plenty of running around. It becomes obvious that someone close to Pacino's character has set him up, and it seems to be either someone at the university (Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Deborah Kara Unger, Benjamin McKenzie) or his assistant (Amy Brenneman) or maybe that security guard (Brendan Fletcher) who has nothing to do with the story but turns up anyway, as so many Canadian actors do in these cheapo film shoots done in our fair country. Cancon regulations? Could be.
Anyway, after many non-hair-raising, non-cliff-hanger, tension-free moments, the killer is revealed.
The flaws in 88 Minutes can be found in several areas (writing, directing, editing, acting, continuity, makeup and cinematography, for starters) and are fairly extensive. Something must have happened for the filmmakers to have given up to this extent, for this is the sort of film in which Vancouver stands in for Seattle, and no one even bothers to get rid of the obvious Vancouver visual clues. Ferry to Victoria, anyone? On an aesthetic level, there are other problems. Pacino is playing a touchy-feely liberated psychologist with Something Tragic in his past, which means he has to be smart and tough and sensitive and a babe magnet all at the same time.
To this end, perhaps, something dreadful has been done to Pacino's hair in the way of dye and gel abuse, and instead of youthful, he looks completely fried. One can only hope the thing on his head is a wig, because at least then he could take it off from time to time. You may consider this to be a minor point, but we assure you it's weird enough to take you out of the movie completely. Which may not be a bad thing.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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