88 MINUTES - Blu-ray review

Because I go to the movies a lot, I see a ton of trailers. Indeed, I look forward to them as they are sometimes the best part of the show. In the case of 2007's "88 Minutes," I probably saw the trailer a half a dozen times in the months leading up to its 2008 U.S. theatrical release, and I was quite looking forward to seeing the film. The trailer looked encouraging, promising a return to form for Al Pacino, who hasn't exactly had a history of notable films in the past I-don't-know-how-many years. Then the movie came out, and I waited a few weeks, and the movie disappeared, and I never got to see it. Now that I have seen it on disc, I can understand why the movie didn't stick around in theaters very long.

Here's the thing: You'd think that an actor of Pacino's stature would have his pick of screenplays. So, why did he go with this standard-issue serial-killer flick? Yes, producer-director John Avnet ("Fried Green Tomatoes," "Up Close & Personal," "Red Corner," "Righteous Kill"), working from a script by Gary Scott Thompson, creates a slick-looking thriller; yet it is so lacking in fundamental logic, reason, rationality, excitement, expectancy, or any sense of character interaction, you'd think it were the work of amateurs. Pacino is better than this, and I can't believe he needed the money.

The basic idea is fine, and I'm sure it might have gone somewhere if somebody had applied a little common sense along the line. Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a university professor and forensic psychiatrist who not only teaches classes in Seattle but helps the police profile serial killers. Nine years earlier his testimony helped convict a man, John Forster (Neal McDonough), of torturing and murdering a woman and possibly doing the same thing to five others as well. Now, on the eve of Forster's execution, Jack gets a phone call from a mysterious stranger threatening his life, telling him he has only eighty-eight minutes to live. At the same time, the police find another woman murdered in exactly the same way Forster killed his victims. Is an accomplice of Forster committing murder to throw doubt on Forster's conviction and possibly get Forster a last-minute reprieve? That's what Jack thinks.

The question is, Should we care? Jack is a bachelor and a womanizer with no real friends. The girls he beds are about half his age or younger. His students barely tolerate him. His secretary, Shelly Barnes (Amy Brenneman), does most of his legwork. And he tends to alienate everybody around him. He is an unlikable fellow, to say the least. No, we don't care about him, and, thus, we don't have much stake in his safety.

What's more, not even Jack seems to care about what's happening to him. For reasons unknown, as Jack gets threatened and attacked, he never seems in the least flustered by it, only mildly annoyed. Is he so arrogant and filled with self-importance that he figures he can weather any storm? Are we to believe that all psychiatrists are unflappable, even in the face of imminent death? Or is Pacino just trying to act supercool? It's hard to tell. The only thing we know for sure is that if Jack doesn't care what's happening to him, why should we?

The movie runs blandly through its paces without generating an ounce of tension or suspense, despite Pacino's running madly around from scene to scene. Then, too, it's one of those films where all the young women are gorgeous, all the young men are handsome, and the villain, whoever he or she is, is everywhere and nowhere at once, all-knowing, and all-powerful.

Clues lead us to believe that everyone in the film is a potential suspect because everyone acts suspiciously. Jack's teaching assistant, Kim Cummings (Alicia Witt), has an ex-husband who spent time in the same prison with the convicted killer. Jack's secretary, Shelly, may have been responsible for the disappearance of one of Jack's most valuable possessions. The Dean of the Psychology Department, Carol Johnson (Deborah Kara Unger), bears Jack a deep-seated grudge. One of Jack's students, Lauren Douglas (Leelee Sobieski), gets unaccountably assaulted. Another of Jack's students, Mike Stempt (Benjamin McKenzie), is secretly doing research on the convicted killer and visiting him in prison. An FBI agent, Frank Parks (William Forsythe), doesn't act as though we can trust him. And so on. I mean, what are the odds that everyone around Jack would have some kind of motive for wanting him dead?

On top of all this, pile on a secret from Jack's past, plus a freight load of coincidences, and you get a pretty far-fetched plot. But, wait, it gets even more ridiculous as it goes along, as Jack himself becomes implicated in the latest murder! After that we get a barrage of bullets and another inexplicable killing and then an exploding car, and, well, the silliness just goes on and on.

Of course, Jack could have avoided the whole mess if he had simply gone to the police when he first received the threatening phone call, but then we wouldn't have had a movie. Instead, Jack decides to solve the case himself. In eighty-eight minutes. Sure.

By the time the movie's climax rolls around and we get the revelation of the killer, we couldn't care less. Or maybe we care too much, considering the ending is so monumentally absurd. Anyway, we've seen so many plot loopholes by this time, it doesn't matter. "88 Minutes" never felt so long.

Video:
The Sony transfer engineers use a MPEG-4/AVC codec and a dual-layer BD50 to get the most out of the 2.35:1 ratio picture, which apparently wasn't enough to compensate for the original print's lack of robust hues. The director intentionally keeps the color palette subdued, meaning he probably wanted to imbue the story with a dark, grim, iron-grey tone and chose colors to match, with contrast levels equally heavy at times, making whites and blacks stand out even more. Then, when the picture is not so bright or glossy, it looks slightly dull and veiled. A mixed bag. On the more positive side, the definition is generally good, with only brief patches of softness, and a moderate film grain furnishes a realistic texture.

Audio:
Just as the Sony engineers try to achieve the best possible video, so do they try to offer the best possible sound in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Unfortunately, as with the video, they didn't have the best materials to work with. On a few occasions the bass thunders out, we feel an impressive dynamic impact, and we note a few rear-channel effects. Most of the time, though, it's only the front speakers that carry the brunt of the work, the surrounds hardly used at all. The soundtrack does its job, and that's about all.

Extras:
Director Jon Avnet provides an audio commentary as the first of several expected items in the list of extras. He pretty much points out the obvious at every turn. Next, there's a ten-minute alternate ending, of which only the final few minutes are any different from the regular ending. Pacino gets a big speech deleted. Then there are two featurettes of a little over seven minutes each, "Director's Point of View" and "The Character Within," that examine the film from the perspective of the director and the star. I found both of them about as interesting as the movie itself, which is not saying much.

Things wind down with sixteen scene selections; bookmarks; a guide to elapsed time; a BD-Live function; previews of eight other Sony movies, along with a Blu-ray promo; English and French spoken languages and subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
Although "88 Minutes" is by no means the worst picture ever made, it is certainly among the worst pictures Al Pacino has ever made. In its defense, you might find "88 Minutes" a perfectly acceptable motion picture if you view it as something akin to a made-for-television product. Indeed, looking over the list of filmmakers, with the exception of Pacino most of them have done the bulk of their work for TV, so it's not entirely unreasonable to find their movie looking and sounding like a TV production. The film has everything in it but commercial breaks. Otherwise, it offers little in the way of originality, creativity, characterization, drama, or thrills. It's an empty and forgettable affair.

Maybe you can further understand my disappoint in "88 Minutes" when I tell you I saw it just shortly after watching all three of Pacino's "Godfather" films again. So, as of this writing we're still waiting for Al's big comeback. But, believe me, it will come. You can't keep an actor of his caliber down and out forever.