Sunday, April 20, 2008

88 Minutes

Matt turned me on to "Gone Baby Gone" a few weeks ago, and I thanked him for that. Why didn't someone warn me about "88 Minutes"? You know who you are, you went and saw this movie before me, heard I was planning on seeing it, and didn't warn me. I'm not sure exactly how I would have responded to that warning, but at least your conscience would be clear. There wasn't a level on which this movie wasn't bad. The setup, the characters, the music, Al Pacino's hair, the acting and worst of all the cell phones. They always tell us to turn off our phones in the theater, Al Pacino didn't get that memo. Who's idea was it to have Pacino on the phone for half the movie, and running from university building to university building the rest of the time. If you want to get some good cardiovascular excersise, just piss-off a seriel killer by putting him in prison. The main female character must have been reading off a tele-prompter, there's no other plausible explination for her delivery of dialouge. I was hoping ten minutes into the movie that somehow Pacino's presence would slightly redeem an already horrible movie, but alas this was not to be. I would have said before that Pacino is one of those actors who is aging gracefully and only accepting roles that play upon his strenghts. Based on this movie I would retract that thought, although I hesitate to say much more out of fear that Pacino really scares me and it wouldn't be good to get on his bad side. All this being said, I'm still really looking forward to seeing Pacino and DeNiro together again in "Righteous Kill", and to the brother who didn't warn me in advance, it's alright, nobody's perfect.