Dir. Jon Avnet, Germany/US/ Canada, Country, 2007, 107 mins
Cast: Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski
Review by Carol Allen
Al Pacino is one of those actors who, as they say, could make reading the telephone directory interesting but sadly, that’s pretty much what he has to do here. It’s really badly written and doesn’t tell it’s story at all well. It doesn’t even live up to its title, being a mind numbingly awful 107 minutes instead of the promised double eight.
Pacino plays forensic scientist and college professor Dr Jack Gramm, who, when he’s not flirting or more with his pretty female students, moonlights with the FBI profiling serial killers. One of his students is murdered in the style of the so-called Seattle Slasher. But, as the Slasher is languishing on death row, after Gramm’s evidence ensured his conviction, it can’t be him, can it? Then Gramm receives a phone call telling him he has eighty eight minutes to live. Gramm must solve the mystery and find the killer before his own time is up. Do we care? Not a jot.
The characters are unconvincing and underwritten with little depth, Avnet’s direction dreary and messy, the dénouement revealing the killer laughably unbelievable and the dialogue clunky. Everybody including Gramm behaves like characters in a movie, doing and saying things that no one would say in real life. For example, as is often the case in such movies, when he gets the death threat, why doesn’t he go immediately to his mates in the police? Only answer, there’d be no movie. It’s also a waste of some very talented actresses ― Alicia Witt and Leelee Sobieski as Gramm’s students, Debra Kara Unger as a member of the college teaching staff and Amy Brenneman as Gramm’s loyal lesbian assistant in a role written by a man (Gary Scott Thompson) who doesn’t appear to know a lot about lesbians. Pacino at times almost makes one believe in his character, just from the sheer force he invests in the character, but a lot of the time his performance is mere barnstorming. After the recent run-of-the-mill Righteous Kill and now this dreadful movie, he would be well advised to accept no more offers from Avnet.
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