Review of 88 Minutes (2007) by Lisa W — 09 Jan 2010

Al Pacino receives a mysterious phone call in which he is told that he has only 88 minutes to live, and then spends the rest of the film beetling all over a rain-swept Seattle in a bid to catch his killer-to-be. Sporting a 'Tom Jones' goatee and dialling back his mega-charisma just a notch, Pacino still manages to sleepwalk through a role that must have seemed a million miles away from The Godfather Part II.

After a creepy opening in which one of a pair of Chinese twins is tortured and murdered (you see it all the time on the news don't you?), director Jon Avnet competently brings to the screen a plot so full of red herrings it could have been set in a Russian fish market. As the story twists and turns, characters are routinely introduced purely to suggest another possible suspect who may have a grudge against Pacino's character; but only serve to make the plot feel even more contrived. Despite the "student", "the security guard", "the biker" and seemingly 101 other possible suspects, I pretty much guessed who the killer was at the very beginning of the film. How? Well, when one of the apparently peripheral characters is played by a reasonably well-known actor, you can sort of guess that they weren't paid a hatful of cash just to be a supporting player.

The film is slightly too long (88 minutes would have been a better running time!), but rattles along at a fair old lick and never stops long enough for you to gaze at the exquisite holes in the plot. Pacino is Pacino and is none the worse for that, but I for one wish that he would be a little more discerning in his choice of material. Given his former glories, he is turning up in far too many bog-standard efforts such as this and really needs to be a little more picky. It's quality not quantity you know, Alfredo?