Review of 15 Minutes (2001) by Robert M — 13 Jul 2009

15 Minutes starts fairly strong and then loses all momentum about halfway through (I won't say where as that would be a gigantic spoiler). I was enjoying De Niro's performance because it was more of a throwback to some of his mid-career performances and not so many mediocre to awful ones from this decade.

There was a lot in this movie that could be good fodder for satire, but the attempts mostly fell flat. I normally like Kelsey Grammer, but his performance here is so over-the-top and obscene that it's hard to listen to what he's saying. The two antagonists could have done so much more with that video camera to further riff on media coverage of crime, but one of the guys is so reprehensible that we can't really care about anything he does, either.

Because of these three big gaffes, it was also hard to care about the meager satire that was presented, and thus hard to care about the movie at all. More De Niro and less Edward Burns could have probably saved this for me.