88 Minutes DVD Review

By Prairie Miller

These types of gimmicky 'the clock is our enemy' crime thrillers have bided their time on screen before. And while 88 Minutes is certainly no 3:10 To Yuma, star Al Pacino's earthy charm and roughneck, gritty personality go far towards keeping audiences in sufficient breathlessly nerve-jangling lockdown for the duration, despite a couple of weirdly situated plot holes. And though Pacino may be running out of both time as a cornered character and energy as a guy with age issues, he definitely impresses while breezing along through here. And, as he observes in the flick, admirably up to snuff 'for my second act,' evidently in more ways than one.

Pacino is Dr. Jack Gramm in 88 Minutes, a workaholic with more than a full plate as a Seattle forensic psychiatrist and racial profiler of serial killers, with possibly his own personal grudge, a college professor of criminal justice, and a part time avid womanizer whose acquaintances include potential femmes fatales played by Alicia Witt and Leelee Sobieski. Nine years after giving testimony that helps send a notorious serial rapist, torturer and killer called the Seattle Slayer to death row, the execution is set for the same day that Jack receives word of gruesome copycat murders that may signal the psycho's innocence. Along with a mysterious phone call advising the shrink that he'll be dead in 88 minutes.

With a professional hunch that the new murders are a setup to help free the maniac, by the condemned inmate and his collection of worshipful groupies that have materialized on his website, Jack dashes all over town dodging bullets, bombs and speeding fire engines, and hijacking a taxi like any dedicated shrink instead of, well, hanging around the safety of a police station for 88 minutes. In the meantime, Jack mulls suspicions about a whole collection of females that have gravitated around him, including his ex-spouse turned lesbian and personal secretary, and a one night stand acquisitioned at a local bar who packs an electric toothbrush and tends to her pearly whites in the bedroom nude in the AM.

Director Jon Avnet (Up Close And Personal) has teamed up with writer Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast And The Furious) for 88 Minutes, substantially convoluted cat-and-mouse, beat the clock escape artist fare with too much time on its hands (just under two hours), and that tends to be light on logic and heavy on the shoe leather. But with a charismatic guy like Pacino around, whom you can pretty much follow wherever he takes you, this mind-boggling maze, even if clocking in way over 88 minutes, is well worth the wait.

Sony Home Entertainment
Rated R
3 stars

DVD Features: Alternate Ending; Featurette: The Character Within.

Prairie Miller is a multimedia journalist online, in print and on radio. Contact her through NewsBlaze.