Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Pacino thriller is bloody nonsense

If someone tells you he intends to kill you in exactly 88 minutes, what would you do?

Personally, I’d dash to the nearest police station and hang around for an hour and a half or so.

But not Dr. Jack Gramm. This professor is a forensic psychologist with a lucrative, admirable sideline: He testifies against murderers so they are put away for good. In “88 Minutes,” one such criminal is about to be executed when a fresh victim turns up — trussed and bled the same way the convicted one killed his prey. Did Dr. Jack mess up? Or is there a copycat on the loose? And what’s with the threatening phone caller who promises to end Gramm’s life in, as we said, 88 minutes?

Red herrings and dopey twists fill this homicidal thriller, which apparently sat on a shelf for a while before being released in the U.S.

Al Pacino fans won’t care. In a rare excursion into genre flicks, the master thespian turns Gramm into an unflappable investigator who seems to ignore obvious threats while trusting all the wrong people.

Sloppy writing and incomprehensible exposition dull this macabre excursion. Messy murders punctuate the action, while we wonder who the real villain might be.

Suspects abound. Gramm’s gorgeous assistant (Alicia Witt) seems too good to be true, while one of his prize students (Leelee Sobieski) is too devoted for words. Could it be his secretary (Amy Brenneman), his university colleague (Debra Kara Unger) or maybe his pal on the police force (William Forsythe)?

And there’s the leering but possibly innocent man on death row (Neal McDonough), who never misses a chance to embarrass the man who helped put him away. How does he do it?

It’s fun to wonder, but the solution is such a letdown that you might be disappointed or even angered.

The film is rated R and runs a long 105 minutes.
We grade it a C.
Find more film fun at BobRossMovies.com