 | |
List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 7945
Released: September 16, 2008 |
| Our Price: $3.30 |
| Used Price: $0.99 |
|
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
In 88 Minutes, Al Pacino stars as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he must use all his skills and training to narrow down the possible suspects, who include a disgruntled student, a jilted former lover, and a serial killer who is already on death row, before his time runs out.
Description of 88 Minutes:
Al Pacino looks startled through much of 88 Minutes, as though taken by surprise at being cast in a thriller that must've first passed across the desks of Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford. Still, Pacino brings his usual oomph to the role of a Seattle forensic psychiatrist, whose testimony secured the death sentence for a crazy serial killer (Neal McDonough). Wouldn't you know it, the very day the killer is sentenced to die, a copycat "Seattle Slayer" is on the loose, and Pacino starts getting ominous phone calls telling him the exact time of his own death. Tick tock: it's 88 minutes away. The film then serves up more red herrings than a Stalingrad fish fry, as possible culprits pop up every five minutes or so (among them an attractive group of med-school students played by Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, and Benjamin McKenzie). Lapses in logic abound, but if you hunker down and zone in on Pacino's weary-eyed, poufy-haired professionalism, you can enjoy the goings-on. (They even make him run up flights of stairs, which one would have thought beyond him now.) Seattle's frequent stunt double, Vancouver, B.C., stands in as a location, and Jon Avnet supplies the slick direction. The cast is talented (including Amy Brenneman), leading you to guess that a lot of people will do anything just to work with Al Pacino. And you've got to admire Pacino's chutzpah at sharing the screen with statuesque actresses such as Brenneman and Sobieski; they tower over him, but he still holds his own. --Robert Horton
Stills from 88 Minutes (click for larger image)
88 Minutes Reviews:
Review of 88 Minutes 
2009-10-12 - This is a fantastic movie. I love Al Pacino and this movie was not a dissapointment. Lots of action and suspense and until the end, I was held to my seat.
88 minutes
2009-09-28 - Good movie, but when is Al pacino ever in a bad one. It was suspenseful and exciting. i recommend to anyone
Tick Tock Al, It's The Sound Of Your Career Running Out 
2009-09-25 - I love Al Pacino and have watched him in many a bad movie. Even when the film sucks, like this one kind of does, he does something to make it watchable and entertaining for fans. Here he plays forensic psychologist Jack Gramm. In addition to his medical practice, Jack teaches a criminal studies class at a local college. He's a a bit of a ladies man after hours keeping company with call girls, his students (Alicia Witt and Lelee Sobieski), his secretary (Amy Brenneman) and even the dean of the college (Deborah Kara Ungar). It was Jack's crucial testimony years earlier that earned a rapist (Neal McDonough) the death penalty. On the day of the execution, Jack awakes to find a man on a motorcycle outside his house. When he arrives at work he sees that the motorcyclist has followed him. He then gets a call on his cell phone in which someone tells him he has only 88 minutes left to live. Jack starts an investigation that has his put upon gay secretary (Brenneman) making about a hundred phone calls and checking the records of the prison, his students, the woman he was with last night and so on and so forth. Jack is clueless as to who is taunting him and his paranoia causes him to run around campus like a madman snatching cell phones away from terrified students. Teaming up with one of his students (Witt), Jack attempts to prove that the murderer he put away is behind this latest threat. The film takes place in real time once Jack is threatened but it's never all that suspenseful. Jack takes the news in stride and he and Witt go to his apartment and basically chill for a half hour until he gets another phone call telling him where to go. Once the person's identity is revealed there have been so many ridiculous twists and turns that the film becomes laughable. The best scene involves an exasperated Jack yelling at an FBI guy (William Forsythe) who believes Jack is behind it all. "Did I blow up my own car? Did I shoot bullets at myself?", Jack yells. (His explanation of how his "DNA" came to be found on a murder victim is also pretty funny). Hell, in the bonus features Pacino admits that much of the film is illogical but that he was still attracted to the material for whatever reason. He says he had a good time making it but that doesn't guarantee that fans will have a good time watching it. The film was made way back in 2005 and shelved for nearly three years. It was directed by Jon Avnet who would reunite Pacino and DeNiro months later in 'Righteous Kill', another ridiculous film, but one that is much more entertaining than this one.
88 Minutes = 3 1/2 Stars 
2009-08-30 - Even though the plot is fairly unbelievable, it's a lot of fun and I really enjoyed this movie. However, without Al Pacino in the lead role (and the presence of the lovely LeeLee Sobieski) it may have been much less watchable. But, let's face it, Al has some major gravitas, and he can carry a movie like few others.
As bad as Pacino's hairstyle 
2009-08-20 - I agree with everyone who's said this movie was bad, stunk, predictable, etc. Pacino running around with a Phil Spector-like "hairdo" was laughable. Alicia Witt, playing one of his students spouted out her lines as if she were reading at an audition. She gave a particularly atrocious acting job in this stinker, that I was really hoping she'd be the next victim to die. The little parts where Pacino is freaking-out, staring at his students, wondering if any one of them was involved in framing him was something out of a You Tube parody. Racing around town in a cab, with the cab driver calmly sitting in the back seat making his hundreds of bucks so that.............oh fergit it. Folks, this is a no-go.
