CINEMA: 88 Minutes

Some films make a specific feature of having a really clever, clever plot with lots of twists, turns, red herrings and cul-de-sacs. 88 Minutes has plenty of all those things, but instead of coming out of it thinking ‘brilliant!’ you’ll probably be scratching your head and saying ‘what on Earth was that all about?’ because it is completely and utterly incomprehensible.

Al Pacino plays Dr Jack Gramm, a world famous forensic psychiatrist and university lecturer who receives a death threat, seemingly from a serial killer locked up on the evidence of Gramm’s expert testimony. While the convicted killer is on death row protesting his innocence, more killings using his modus operandi occur, so has Gramm made a mistake – is the killer still out there and an innocent man about to go to his death? – or are these copycat murders being carried out by persons unknown? The death threat says Gramm has only 88 minutes to find out so begins a frantic (and deeply baffling) sequence of events as Gramm and his assistants and students (Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski and Amy Brenneman) rush to re-examine old evidence and clues, while trying to stay alive.

Unfortunately, the film’s script is so overegged and complicated, the viewer is battered into a state of total confusion within the first 60 minutes. While you may try your hardest to keep all the characters and their relationships straight in your head, everything soon scrambles into so much spaghetti you lose the will to try and unravel it.

By forgetting the rule to ‘keep it simple’, director Jon Avnet has created a film that makes no sense and is extremely frustrating to watch.      Dee Pilgrim