There was absolutely nothing worth watching on TV tonight, so I opted to spend $3.99 on a pay-per-view movie that looked interesting - 88 Minutes - starring a pretty good list of talented actors: Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, Neal McDonough and of course, Al Pacino.What a horrid trainwreck of a movie pretending to be a major film release! One of the worst I have ever seen.
There are plenty of scathing reviews on IMDB about this film, so I'm not going to rehash the random plot and complete lack of coherent continuity. I just wonder what goes through the minds of supposedly talented people when they read the script (if there was one) and then actually try to put these scenes onto film. I guess a lot of the blame goes to the director, Jon Avnet. He's been around a while, mostly as a TV producer and director, but with a fairly decent list of credentials and credits. He must have forcefully avoided exhibiting any talent when directing this turkey. How could he have NOT seen what he was doing?
The totally goofy thing about this movie is how quickly it jumps from one dead-end plot device to the next. And someone's cell phone rings at least twice in every scene. It's almost as if they realized they had absolutely nothing going for them here, and decided to just try and divert the audience from following too closely. Everyone zips around from place to place with no particular reason, takes a few cell phone calls and then introduces a new suspect when it was obvious to me from almost the start who the bad guy really was. The scene in which Pacino almost gets run over by a firetruck is nothing but laughable.
Also laughable - but in a sad, sorry way - is what they do to Amy Brenneman's character. She is the ultra-efficient, absolutely perfect personal assistant to Pacino's character. Of course her fatal flaw - and the one that makes the whole plot fiasco possible - is that she is gay and allowed herself to be seduced by the psychopathic female killer. Of course! While they nap after wild sex in Pacino's office, the baddie is able to get everything necessary to torment Pacino. And when she comes clean to Pacino and admits what she's done, she begs for forgiveness. Pacino's response has got to go down as one of the worst lines ever in modern American cinema:
If I couldn't forgive you, I wouldn't deserve you.
GAG!
Whenever I watch a movie I truly hope it's going to be outstanding, and I go into it hoping upon hope that it will be thoroughly entertaining. I don't approach films cynically or looking for flaws, which is why it makes me so angry when something like this gets released. It's insulting.
The film's running time is 108 minutes. I kind of expected them to do a High Noon and make the length the same at the title and do it in real time. If they had just cut out a few of the cell phone red herring calls, they probably could have gotten rid of 20 minutes and made it 88. Might even have improved it!
I hope you don't get suckered into paying money to watch this mess. Everyone involved should issue an apology and promise never again to waste our time - or theirs - with such trash.
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