‘88 Minutes’:
Pacino wastes your time

At the Movies
By Senitra Horbrook

As helpful as cell phones can be, at times they are more annoying than anything else. These days it is not uncommon to see someone yakking away while walking down the street, in the grocery store or while driving.
So it’s understandable that cell phones are now an integral part of the movie business. But do I really want to see a movie where the main character spends an inordinate amount of time on the phone? Not really, and in 88 Minutes, Al Pacino’s character does exactly that.
All those wasted cell-phone minutes aren’t nearly the worst part of 88 Minutes. The Jon Avnet-directed thriller isn’t at all thrilling — in fact, it’s utterly unbelievable.
Jack Gramm (Pacino) is a Seattle-based forensic psychiatrist who also teaches at a local university. Gramm’s testimony on a 10-year-old murder case is coming back to haunt him. The "Seattle Slayer" Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) is due to be executed in just a few hours, but he continues to maintain his innocence and badly wants a stay on his execution.
Oddly enough, gory murders exactly like the ones creepy killer Forster was convicted of are happening all over again. When I say gory, I mean women hung upside down by one leg and sliced open, so beware.
Around the same time, Gramm starts getting phone calls notifying him that his time here on Earth is nearing an end. The first call gives him — you guessed it — 88 minutes to live. The killer is nice enough to call back every few minutes and update Jack on how long he’s got left. "Tick-tock Doc" the voice on the phone says a few two many times.
You’d think Jack would be using that phone to dial 911 and get some police on the case, but something so obvious wouldn’t work for this contrived plot. Instead, Jack goes on a wild goose chase, hunting down everyone — including a lot of young ladies — in his life that may have an ax to grind. Yes, even in his late 60s, Pacino is playing a womanizer who goes home with 20-somethings he meets at the bar. There are plenty of red herrings to keep the audience yawning — I mean guessing — but actually Forster is suspect number one in Jack’s mind.
This theory makes no sense, because how can someone do such dirty deeds and threaten lives from behind bars while giving live interviews to MSNBC? Ultimately, the end of this so-called "thriller" and the revelation of the killer are absolutely preposterous and laughable.
Pacino gets most of the screen time, while Alicia Witt follows him around, playing a student/possible suspect who may either be helping or hurting his search for the killer. Leelee Sobieski plays another student/suspect, and her performance is so laughable it seems she probably just wanted to have a movie with Pacino on her resume.
Pacino feels as if he just phoned in the role, fittingly, since his character spends an insane amount of time on the phone. Pacino’s lack of intensity is a huge disappointment. After all, he’s arguably one of the greatest actors of all time, with seven Academy Award nominations and one win in 1992 for Scent of a Woman.
I don’t quite see the allure of 88 Minutes for him. I would think he’s well-off enough to not be doing it for the paycheck. Maybe he owed a friend a favor?
If you want to do yourself a favor, skip 88 Minutes.
Movie Grade: D