The Hawk

Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: Entertainment

Pacino stumbles through Hollywood cliches in his latest thriller "88 Minutes."

One of the chief problems of "88 Minutes"-and to be sure, there are hundreds-lies in the fact that the movie is, well, 88 minutes long.

This makes it both too short to develop the 83rd to 97th plot twists and too long to keep the viewers interest for the last half hour.

Al Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a forensic something-or-other who is responsible for putting Jon Forster (Neil McDonough) behind bars for hanging women upside down while slicing them apart and raping them. (The movie is actually 108 minutes to allow for an endless opening sequence, which shows this graphic bind, torture and kill.)

Gramm receives mysterious cell phone calls warning him that he only has an hour and twenty-two minutes to live. The calls feature a deep voice uttering the most horrifying nursery rhyme ever: "Tick, tock, Doc. You have [fill in the blank] minutes to live."

These occasional calls and messages are welcome to viewers, who are able to use them as a guide to when this godforsaken train wreck of a film will end, allowing them to get on with their lives.

Doc Gramm follows clues to find out who this aspiring Dr. Seuss is, and everyone's a suspect. No, really. Everyone. You can tell, because they all walk by Gramm in slow motion with a close-up on their faces, each with an "I'm-gonna-kill-you" stare.

All the information that Gramm has to go on is that the "Seattle Slayer," as the killer is called, is wearing leather. (Seattle must be a pretty kinky town, because everyone seems to either be wearing a full bikers outfit or dressed like Rob Halford of Judas Priest.)

"88 Minutes" is just a clumsy effort at moviemaking. The dialogue ranges from unspeakably horrible to incredibly forced. Character development is squeezed into the limited timeframe as an afterthought to exploding cars, as characters talk about their relationship troubles and childhood traumas.

The plot twists are this hurried too. ("Darn, I broke my cell phone." "Here, use mine.") Or: ("He's not really your ex-boyfriend, is he?" "No, he's my ex-husband.")

The writing, to put it mildly, is horrendous. From an early courtroom scene that sounds like it was written by a seventh grader who just discovered Shakespearean prose, you can tell it's going to be a rough ride.

Continued...

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