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Search forRacing against time seldom seems so slow
Friday, October 03, 2008, 07:00
You'd be right to be wary of director Jon Avnet's second feature in as many weeks with leading man Al Pacino. 88 Minutes is nonsense from pedestrian opening to preposterous finale, coasting along on a series of ludicrous leaps of logic that screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson disingenuously passes off as twists.
If the film's premise is neat – a college professor receives an anonymous telephone call to inform him that he will be dead within two hours, and must then race against the clock to prevent his own demise – the execution is clumsy, bordering on inept.
It takes Pacino's hero the best part of quarter of an hour to comprehend the rules of the game and to play along, but in mere seconds we can spot the myriad flaws in Thompson's design.
When the ill-fated hero collects his Porsche from a parking garage, he finds it vandalised with '72 Minutes' hand-scrawled on the trunk.
Our bewilderment that the perpetrator could possibly pre-empt his movements with split-second precision is compounded when Pacino then drives across town and the damage to the vehicle's paintwork and windows magically heals itself.
The actor also finds time in his protagonist's hectic schedule to reapply hair colourant: his visibly greying barnet is shiny and well-tinted by the final showdown. It's a bad sign when the leading man's roots hold more interest than performances or plot.
It's tempting to hang up on Avnet's film, but we remain dialled in, hoping Pacino's usual theatrics might enliven the tedium.
Regrettably, he's on auto-pilot along with most of his co-stars, who fail to convince us that their two-dimensional characters aren't simple red herrings.
Guessing the perpetrator's identity comes down to a straight choice between the glaringly obvious and the least likely suspects.
We've all seen enough thrillers to know which candidate will soon be cackling defiantly: "You look so totally clueless!"
Screenwriter Thompson could almost be talking to himself.
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