88 Minutes
Directed by Jon Avnet
Millenium Films, 2008
By Rachel West
88 Minutes takes a less-than-exciting premise and drags it on, fills itself with plot twists and turns, secondary characters, and more conspiracies than you can shake a stick at. But if you can get past the lack of originality and plausibility, it’s not a terrible waste of time to see a well-tanned Pacino ham it up on screen.
But that’s where the attraction ends.
Pacino is Dr. Gramm, a forensic psychiatrist with his own practice and college professor, who occasionally works for the FBI in his spare time. The background details of Dr. Gramm are foggy at best, as are his credentials, but his most noted and controversial case is back in the headlines as the man he helped convict faces execution that very evening (!). Soon he receives a phone call telling him he has 88 minutes to live, hopefully the pizza will get there in 40. Sure enough, there are plenty of potential suspects and side stories thrown into the mix, some seemingly out of nowhere, such as foreign ex-con boyfriends, a lesbian love story, and increasingly silly motives. By the time Gramm has 22 minutes to live, you’ll be looking at your watch and wishing whoever was threatening him would just cut to the chase and kill him already.
For a concept and plot that takes 88 minutes to play out, the film lasts much longer than it needs to. The whole film comes across as a cheap, quickie thriller, and not surprisingly, it was released almost a full year ago in France before hitting screens in North America — a sure sign that this film isn’t great.
There is really no reason to watch the film other than to see Al Pacino, since it doesn’t deliver any real suspense above the level of an episode of Law & Order or CSI, complete with exaggerated and ridiculous sounding suspects like Guy LaForge, the British ex-con. Other than Alicia Witt, who is decent, the secondary cast members have minimal time on screen, as the film is clearly centred on Pacino who shows up, wide-eyed with a wind-blown coif, in every scene. This isn’t the Pacino of The Godfather or Heat. This is the Pacino of Gigli. I bet you forgot he was even in that one. That, or I’m the only one who isn’t embarrassed to admit to watching it.
88 Minutes is an okay time-waster if every other film is sold out, every DVD is rented, or there’s nothing on TV except Gigli. Unless you are a giant Pacino fan — and who doesn’t get some semblance of joy from his over-the-top angry characters these days? — you’re better off with 88 minutes to yourself.
