88 minutes

Even when he is in bad movies, I get a kick out of watching Al Pacino. There is something about his over the top yelling and in your face over acting that gets me every time. So, as long as the movie has a few moments where Pacino gets to go all Pacino on every one in the movie, I am set. I also kind of enjoy time gimmicky entertainment. 24 is a favorite show of mine and things like Nick of Time are guilty pleasures of mine because I like how the real time gimmick manipulates my sense of urgency. 88 minutes features a time gimmick and Al Pacino, so I was all set for some film enjoyment, right?

Dr. Jack Gramm(Pacino) gives testimony that puts Jon Forster(Neil McDonough) behind bars for rape and murder. He claims Forster is a serial rapist/murderer, but Forster is only tried and convicted of one case, so Forster claims his innocence and gains legions of fans. The day Forster is to be capitally punished, Gramm gets a phone call that says he has 88 minutes to live. He ignores it at first to go about his day, which includes teaching at a Seattle college, but soon he can no longer ignore the threats because he is being set up for a few new murders that are set up just like the one he convicted Forster of. From here the movie spirals into introducing new characters, giving them ominous backgrounds/possible motives, and having Gramm doubt everything.

If you can not tell from the brief plot description, this movie is not good. I am not sure if they decided to have the whole thing be 88 minutes because that is how long it took the writer to come up with the story, write it and revise it, or if the 88 minutes is just entirely random like everything else in this movie. Fire trucks nearly crash into a crowd of people, we meet characters who will be important except we never see them again, and when the villain is revealed, it sheds light on the fact that most of the movie was unnecessary. 88 minutes spends so much time trying to cast a shadow of doubt on each and every damn character that almost nothing of merit actually happens because the writer and director spend so much time trying to fake us out. The problem is, by the time the end comes we no longer care and just want the movie to come to an end. There is gratuitous nudity, and a preposterous lesbian kiss, which leads me to believe the guy who wrote this script is about 16 years old, which would make sense considering the dialog. There are a lot of attractive people sitting on the sidelines of this movie who probably were dying to work with the great AL Pacino, but instead they were treated to Pacino picking up an easy pay check and sleep walking his way through the film. He doesn't even get to really let loose with some scenery chewing. I am sorry, but if you have Pacino in your movie you go back and write him a powerfully over the top monologue. It is the least you could do for the sake of your audience.

The editing is lax, the directing is weak and not at all self assured and the acting from everyone, most notably Alicia Witt playing a girl with a crush on Pacino, is unbelievably awful and they didn't even use the time gimmick to the best of its ability. Also, while the trivia on imdb says that once he is told he has 88 minutes to live that the movie runs in real time from then, I am not entirely sure I buy that. Granted, I was not checking my watch every time they mentioned the time, but with a running time of 108 minutes, I am not sure I buy it. My favorite thing about the movie though is during the first scene when the year is 1997. Not only do we see a headline of Princess Diana's death, we see a t.v. story, the two girls talk about it, the camera then zooms in on the date in case we didn't realize this was in the late nineties. But to cap it off, the girl just has to turn on N*Sync. Talk about not trusting your audience to figure out the date!

Overall Grade: D