88 Minutes (2007)

Starring: Al Pacino, Neal McDonough, William Forsythe, Alicia Witt, and Amy Brenneman
Grade: D-

Does William Forsythe use glue to slick his hair back? I mean this motherfucker has it SLICKED BACK.

Summary

In Seattle in 1997, a serial killer named “The Seattle Slayer” breaks into the apartment of Janie Cates (Tammy Hui) and her sister Joanie (Vicky Huang). The killer drugs Joanie and hangs her upside down. Then, Janie is caught next after she wakes up to the cat making noise. As she hangs, the cat makes more noise. The killer goes to the window to either feed the cat or knock it off the ledge (not sure), but when he opens the window, we hear a neighbor complaining about the cat. Janie uses this opportunity to scream, and it scares away the killer.

Jon Forster (McDonough) is identified as the killer by Janie, and they are all brought to court. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jack Gramm (Pacino) is brought to testify and give his expert opinion on the matter. Gramm’s opinion is that Forster is “The Seattle Slayer”, and he should be in prison. It’s enough to convict Forster. Forster looks at Gramm after the sentencing and says with a smile, “Tick-tock, Doc. Tick-tock.”

Nine years later, Gramm wakes up to watch some girl he fucked the night before, as she brushes her teeth, with one leg in the air, naked.

You heard that right.

He gets a call from FBI Special Agent and friend Frank Parks (Forsythe). Parks tells him he’s at another crime scene that is exactly the same as how “The Seattle Slayer” use to do his killings. This isn’t good for Gramm because if he convicted the wrong person, everyone looks bad. Today is also the day that Jon Forster will be sentenced to death too. Gramm tells Parks to meet him at the office and leaves. On the way out, some guy on a motorcycle watches him. He gets to the office and is greeted by his secretary and Janie Cates, who brings by some cookies as a “thank you” for convicting Forster. Next, Gramm has his meeting with the FBI and Jeremy Guber (Christopher Redman), the head of the “Seattle Slayer” task force. The meeting does not go well, as Guber questions if Gramm’s “expert” opinion years ago might have been wrong about Forster. He then questions how Gramm knows Dale Morris, a woman that was killed the night before and was a student/patient of his. What makes this issue a bit troublesome was that Gramm admits that Morris was at his party at the bar the night before, celebrating the fact that Forster is going down. The FBI plays a video tape from the crime scene where Morris reads off a message saying Forster is innocent. Gramm leaves the room angrily.

He starts his own investigation and tells his secretary to find out everything she can about Dale Morris’s whereabouts last night. He goes to teach his class at the University of Washington but as he gets on campus, he gets a phone call. It is of a distorted voice telling him he has “88 minutes to live”. He immediately tells his secretary to contact his wireless carrier to see if they can find out who called him. Afterwards, Gramm gets to class late and starts teaching, but he gets another threatening call. He tries to stay on topic with the lesson but sees that motorcycle guy again. This time, he’s standing in the back of the class. His secretary calls him and says that the phone is registered to Jack’s sister Kate. He loses the call, and the villain comes back on and accuses Gramm of fucking up the Forster case. Gramm starts to lose it, threatens a student that has a phone, and tries to chase the motorcycle guy, but the guy escapes. Gramm comes back to the class, only for the students to get mad at him for not telling them Dale Morris was murdered. Immediately after, a bomb threat is called in and everyone leaves.

As Gramm leaves, he sees someone wrote on his projector “76 minutes to live”. Gramm leaves and quickly after is told by his secretary that Forster’s execution is being delayed because of new accusations towards the validity of Gramm’s comments. He sees his TA, Kim (Witt), in the parking garage and after initially asking accusatory questions towards her, he relents once she says she wants to help him. He shows her the message on his car. It says he has “72 minutes to live”. Now him, Kim, and Gramm’s secretary team together to find out who is targeting Gramm, as well as finding out if the possibility he’s wrong about Forster is true.

My Thoughts:

For being a thriller, 88 Minutes is not very thrilling.

Al Pacino’s Jack Gramm doesn’t even seem surprised at what’s going on either. He’s incredibly prepared for this crazy countdown threat throughout the entire film. He explains to a co-worker he gets three or four threats a year, so all things considered, he acts pretty calmly about the situation. It’s just a little odd. I think having Gramm be this confident was clearly a choice for the main character to be different from what we usually see, but I don’t think the choice helped. I think the character needed to be freaking out a little bit. He jumped into the fearless action hero role almost too quickly. That fearlessness would’ve been cool if it was brought out once he was pushed to the brink a little further, forcing Gramm to have a “fuck it” attitude. It’s just that right from the start, he was ready to go to war, which is weird because to my understanding, this character doesn’t see much action because he’s a fucking FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST!

Besides Pacino, McDonough, Forsythe, and Brenneman, the acting from everyone else was noticeably below average. Everyone seemed off and the veterans were trying to hold it together, making this film feel like it was in direct-to-video territory. It was that bad at times. The reveal at the end was a massive letdown as well, and that’s mostly because the villain was also an average actor with little to no emotion. For such a wild buildup, it was incredibly underwhelming. I understand that the real villain in question was supposed to go with a “smug” type of reaction, but it just wasn’t charismatic or entertaining enough to make me care. The reasoning for the killer was also so detailed and elaborate that it just seemed a little too far-fetched to believe. Additionally, it was kind of hard to understand until Gramm explained everything in the final phone call (which was admittedly a pretty cool ending). After the reveal of the killer, I also couldn’t help but think that some of the stuff they did (while concealing their identity) was flat-out impossible, unless more people were in on it.

Honestly, explain to me how the killer was able to write how many minutes Gramm had left to live on his projector, without the entire class seeing it happen? You can’t say it happened before class because the slides were already up and in the middle of a lesson when he walked in. The “special” slide would’ve been seen right away had it been there before class. It had to have been written while the class was happening, making it virtually impossible for the person to not be seen by at least one person in that room unless the villain is a wizard or a fucking ghost. Besides this and the very poorly acted opening to the film, I also had an issue with the class being mad at Gramm for not telling them about Dale’s death. I understand he may be close with his students, but it’s not his fucking job to tell them about another student’s business. For some reason though, they all get pissy with him and look at him like he murdered a puppy. What if he was grieving and didn’t want to talk about it? It’s none of their business!

Speaking of college classes, none of them have that much consistent participation. I guess that is the least important thing to bring up when speaking of problems with 88 Minutes, but I felt it had to be noted.

The only saving grace of this movie was that we get to see Al Pacino in another thriller and his character refusing to believe he’s wrong about anything which can be funny. He’s still pretty entertaining, as the arrogant Jack Gramm has his moments. I just can’t help but feel that nothing else really matched up. It felt as if as soon as they got Pacino to sign on to do the movie, the entire production crew decided they would be safe and stopped trying.

88 Minutes is watchable, but I definitely see why it’s usually in the bargain bin at every used video store.