Review of Out of Time (2003) by William B — 30 Nov 2009

I've seen this movie twice, once when it first hit DVD, and yesterday, 6 years later. I liked it the first time, when expectations were low and I knew less about movies, and thought it was awful the second time.

The movie hasn't changed, my perspective of it has, so where does the movie itself fit? Let's talk about the movie and find out. I'll tell you in one line. Denzel (because he needs no other character name, right?), chief of police in tropic south Florida town, gets assigned a case in which HE is the guilty party and must thwart his partner (recent ex-wife, smokin' Eva Mendes) and entire police department...before it's too late or before he is...out of time!

So the suspense is great, first and second time around. This is no doubt WHY I liked the movie the first time, or why anyone would enjoy this movie, aside from Denzel fans.

For people who like most movies you will find this movie "pretty good," but here's why it is not really good, or probably any good for that matter.

The first act (first 30 minutes) has hardly anything to do with the second act. In layman's terms, we have to watch too much boring shit with Denzel, some girl he's hooking up with, and her actual boyfriend (the conflict of their love triangle) before we get to what we saw in the preview = WHY we actually rented the movie in the first place.

Side Note: Our hero is the cause of his own conflict, stealing evidence money to help the girl he's being an adulter with...but hey, if later he says he was just being dumb we'll forgive him right...I mean, he didn't know it was completely and utterly immoral so it's cool right?...right?

Anyway, the story sets up an antagonist (terrible cheese-dick actor), the male of the love triangle, only to have him disappear for an hour.

The story is not proportioned correctly because it was written the wrong way. Dare I say this Hollywood movie needed the hands of Jeb Stuart, David Koepp, and Tony Gilroy.

Verdict: If you have patience and you like most everything you will like Out of Time. If you Minority Report and Indiana Jones 4, you will also like this movie. If you like Donnie Darko and Boondock Saints, and the Seventh Samarai, you probably already know not to pick this movie up. If you are tweener like myself, watch it with low expectations, because you might be surprised to get your money's worth, but not much more.