When you think about it, it's amazing what you can do in 88 minutes. If you're driving at or near the speed limit, you can cover anywhere from 90 to 100 miles or so (or just a few if stuck in rush hour in most any big city), while in his heyday, Jack Lalanne did 1,000 star jumps and 1,000 chin-ups in a little less time that that. For those less physically inclined, they can count their heart beat somewhere in the range of 5,000 times or listen to the song "88 Lines about 44 Women" 17 or so times.
If you're director Jon Avnet, however, it appears you can't make a film titled "88 Minutes" that's actually that long (talk about false advertising!). Instead, it clocks in at 105 minutes, but the lack of temporal consistency is the least of this long-delayed pic's problems, although the extra 1,020 seconds do end up exacerbating one's misery if stuck watching it.
In fact, this tale of a man faced with the titular life or death deadline is so incompetently made that it nearly becomes something of a hoot to watch. Although anyone doing so will wonder 1) what persuaded star Al Pacino to agree to appear in it, 2) whether he actually read the screenplay that's awful in just about every way imaginable and 3) why this stinker didn't go directly to home video like many a film with notable stars often do, albeit usually with little to no fanfare.
I've been told that when Pacino's character receives the catalytic phone call announcing his nearly hour and a half deadline, the film then takes that exact amount of time to play out. That could be, but by the time we got to that point, I could have cared less. Feeling like one of those high concept flicks from the 1980s, it's a whodunit affair where Avnet and screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson offer up so many red herrings that the cinematic fishing season could be run all year without ever running short of potential perps.
To be fair, the basic concept does have some potential, albeit of the limited and recycled variety. A noted forensic psychologist's testimony is enough to convict a serial killer (Neal McDonough) of the usual deeds. Years later, and on the day of that man's scheduled execution, that witness gets a call stating he has 88 minutes to live. To make matters more interesting, similar killings have started up again, and they're now pointing to the protag who must race against the clock to find who's terrorizing him.
Considering the wild success of TV's "24" (where each 60 minute episode -- commercials included -- plays out in that amount of time, thus meaning all of any given season's shows add up to one day), I can see why this pic probably got the green light. Yet, unlike that show, just about everything regarding this offering is off or just plain bad, sometimes spectacularly so.
Despite the setup, Avnet bungles the chance of getting us to care about any of the characters. The same holds true regarding building any sort of believable tension, especially in terms of ramping that up as the clock keeps ticking down. Shot selection and editing are poor, the dialogue is particularly atrocious (for a wide variety of reasons), and some of the acting equates to the old fingernails and blackboard torture.
Pacino is competent when not being forced to run here and there (often appearing as if he's trying to find some escape route off the set), but his performance is sort of a highlight reel of footage from his career, including the inevitable scene where mounting emotions eventually erupt into burst of intense shouting.
Everyone else (including notable performers such as Amy Brenneman who's wasted as a personal assistant, William Forsythe who has little to do, and Leelee Sobieski who stinks up the place, although not as badly as Alicia Witt) presumably signed on to appear in a film with the star, and apparently didn't read the script either.
Off from the get-go, the pic only gets worse as it plays out, leading up to a truly wretched conclusion where the perp's identity and reasoning are finally revealed, but never in anything remotely resembling believability. About the only thing the film has going for it is in counting the ways in which it misfires, which occasionally leads to some obviously unintentionally funny moments.
Even so, I'd rather be doing those 1,000 pull-ups while creeping along in bumper-to-bumper traffic than spend another 88 (or 105) minutes with this mess. "88 Minutes" rates as a 2 out of 10, simply for providing a smattering of its-so-bad laughs.
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