88 Minutes

“You have 88 minutes to live.” Comfortable start, I think you’ll agree. With the scene thus set for a thrilling nail-biter, maverick forensic psychiatrist Jack Gramm (Al Pacino) begins the race against the clock to find a serial killer and, to make it extra tense, to save his own life.

So far, so good; but does he have a troubled past, I wondered? It’s tough to cope with an unblemished good guy these days. As if on cue, Gramm’s mysterious telephonic tormentor throws in a few sly references to our truth-seeker’s dark secrets – sure to get his superiors and us mistrusting his wild intuition.

With a warm, earthy weariness, Pacino reveals personal problems ranging from commitment-phobia to…what? The plot strands weave dizzyingly around us and Gramm’s paranoia is infectious. Our suspicions flicker between leather-jacketed bikers, sinister doormen and, well, pretty much everyone.

The numerous attempts on Gramm’s life might seem lacking in real threat when we feel fairly sure it will take at least 88 minutes to get to that point. Still, plenty of beautiful female students flock around him, available to be attacked in gruesome yet disturbingly sexual ways.

88 Minutes is sharp and pacy and, like 24, the timing smoothly follows the nuances of Gramm’s hardened thought processes. As the guessing-game develops, it’s clear from the careful psychological manipulation that writer Gary Scott Thompson really knows his genre.

Perhaps a little too well. 88 Minutes contains so many standard murder mystery elements and so many characters who study criminals themselves, that it seems almost a parody of itself. Brilliant, so it’s a parody of itself. What will undermine our expectations now? As Pacino wields various gizmos to protect his own life, I wondered if director Jon Avnet was playing with us. We think we know it all, but Avnet is going to defy our crude expectations and prove that he is in control. What deviousness would emerge that this psychiatrist, and this audience, hadn’t seen before?

Well… the answer, really, was nothing. The film ended as it started, a moderately exciting thriller that could have been made any time in the last 20 years. Perhaps it was naïve to expect something different, but this film was certainly underwhelming. Like us, its creators were too familiar with this story. 88 Minutes was no more than a caricature of its own making. This is disappointing, because the deft shots, skilled cast and simple narrative had seemed to brim with twisty and self-reflexive potential.

Pacino plays his part effortlessly, probably because he could formerly have done this in his sleep. His attractive young wannabes never quite get close to the brusque Gramm, nor do they get close to the glory they may have expected from being part of an Al Pacino film. Without preconceptions and without raising the bar, it may be possible to turn on your whodunit radar and just savour a sliver of suspense. 88 Minutes is glossy but ultimately unsatisfying, a copycat killing of a film we’ve seen a hundred times before.

Last edited: 30th April 2009