When an American film starring American actors is seemingly
released everywhere but America itself, it is a telltale sign of the film’s
lousy content. Enter “88 Minutes,” the Al Pacino vehicle filmed in
2005 and released on DVD and theatrically in France as early as February 2007.
Only now is it getting a theatrical release in its home country. Not to mention
it’s been floating around torrents for at least 16 months.

Pacino (“Ocean’s Thirteen”) stars as Seattle
resident Dr. Jack Gramm, a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI and college
professor who receives an anonymous call stating that he has the titular amount
of time before he dies.

The problem is that the call is placed on the eve of serial
killer Jon Forster’s execution, who Gramm helped put away. Gramm immediately
suspects that Forster — who is convinced that Gramm set him up in court — is
the one behind the death threat. So Gramm must race against the clock to figure
out whose deathly setup it is before it’s — dun, dun, dun — too late.

Pacino’s absolute debacle of a haircut can be seen as a
microcosm of the whole film.

Everyone and (nearly) every word is a mess. The
every-which-way hairdo Pacino employs is literally the collective cast in the
movie. Pacino over-emotes every single scene, Alicia Witt (“Law and Order:
CI”) is in a state of perpetual deer-in-the-headlights haze, and Amy
Brenneman (“Judging Amy”) seems to alternately function on either
stimulants or depressants, depending on the scene. Nothing is consistent.

It may not actually be Pacino’s fault for overacting in
every scene, however. The near-constant expression on his face suggests that
somewhere in his subconscious, even he knows the screenplay sucks and he’s just
trying to save it by emphasizing every single word or sentence. Even Pacino
asking FBI agents if they want a homemade cookie becomes a labored affair.

Witt, who plays Gramm’s teaching assistant Kim Cummings, is
of special note, as her performance is one of the most unpredictable I’ve ever
seen. In certain scenes she’s actually believable — usually scenes involving
action or feelings supposedly tantamount to “suspense.” However, in
other scenes it’s almost as if she’s reading cue cards.

William Forsythe (2007’s “Halloween”), who plays
Special Agent Frank Parks, is the most robotic FBI agent in history, though
that may be based upon reality, so perhaps that can’t be held against him.

If the main problem isn’t the acting (a tough call), it’s
certainly the screenplay. Its main fault is that it tries to throw off the
viewer with various candidates for the true caller, but it’s plainly obvious
who it actually is one-third of the way through the film. And if you haven’t
figured it out by the 80-minute mark, then you’re clearly not paying attention
at all.

The dialogue is also questionable. Few scenes, if any, have
characters reacting like actual people. Instead, most the script is cliched
hackery. A great example of the fantastic dialogue is when Cummings asks Gramm
if her ex-husband is dead, to which Gramm deadpans, “It doesn’t look good,”
in the most matter-of-fact voice possible. There is simply no creativity in the
script.

Even the characters’ names lack any real thought. With
surnames like Gramm, Cummings, Douglas and Parks, it’s a wonder screenwriter
Gary Scott Thompson (a writer for the first two “The Fast and the
Furious” atrocities) even bothered with them at all. Thompson couldn’t
come up with whiter names if he watched a “Chappelle’s Show” sketch.

Then there’s the questionable photography. The random
close-ups of faces mid-conversation are something out of a soap opera parody.
The squinty-eyed stares of almost every character in this straight-to-DVD-grade
movie are something right out of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. The
film would have been pure genius had it been intended as a parody or satire of
the modern suspense genre instead.

The nondescript music by Ed Shearmur also detracts. The
bland “this is a suspense scene” muzak only helps to point out that
the whole movie is shrouded in a fog of ineptitude.

And the sound effects that are supposed to evoke
pulse-pounding thrills have only the effect of generating a chuckle here or
there when the viewer asks, “Is this really a serious movie?”

Not every single thing about the movie is terrible, however.
Neal McDonough (“Machine”), who plays Jon Forster, is actually quite
believable. His portrayal of a scorned serial killer is perhaps the one saving
grace of this whole fiasco.

Even if Pacino did this just for the paycheck, he probably
couldn’t justify this disaster. Damn.

?

1/2 star out of 5