88 Minutes (2007/8) -

A stunning wrongheaded concoction posing as an "adult" thriller. Al Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a forensic psychiatrist whose carefully crafted professional persona casts a long shadow. He's a famous provider of "expert testimony" who regularly makes the rounds of the television talkshow circuit. He also teaches an elite seminar at an apparently major university. And, as the film begins, he's the subject of a gaslighting by an anonymous stalker who keeps promising that he'll die in eighty-eight minutes. (The basic shtick is that one of Gramm's most high-profile convictions -- a serial rapist/murderer whose conviction rested almost exclusively upon evidence provided by Gramm -- is coming up for execution, occasioning a new round of scrutiny for this controversial conviction.) So, the story basically goes: a new batch of murder's matching the profile of the incarcerated killer begin popping up around town. The kicker is that all the victims happen to be young women in Jack Gramm's life. At the same time, the convicted killer is hollering once again about his innocence. Together, these three circumstances begin to cast suspicion on Jack just as his day starts becoming really complicated when he begins receiving cell phone calls from a mysterious voiced man who claims that Gramm will be dead in eighty-eight minutes. So, the narrative must maneuver all of these plot points -- exonerate Jack, reveal the perpetrator of the hoax, kill a couple more women along the way to keep things "interesting", blahblahblah. At center is Al Pacino in a giant wig, huffing and puffing his way through various close calls. The cast around him (Leelee Sobieski, Alicia Witt, Amy Brenneman, William Forsythe, Benjamin McKenzie) all are foils, alternately doubting Gramm's innocence even as their own guilt at the possible gaslighter opens and closes at arbitrary intervals. I found that I felt mostly sorry for this talented youngish cast, who (inevitably) hopped on board this ridonkulous project for the chance to work with Pacino. But a lot of good it does them. Some try their best to do good work (Witt, Brenneman, Forsythe) and come out relatively unscathed, while others provide proof of just how much they can (and cannot) do. (Truth be told, Sobieski does give Pacino a run for the "worst" acting in this movie, though the disaster of her performance is less tragic than that represented by his.) The real problem is that the film has no idea what it wants to be. It's really the kind of movie Michael Douglas might have starred in back in 1996 but, with Pacino in the lead role, there seems to be a greater sense of reach in the film but little intelligence, insight or irony to back it up. (A cynical "twist" toward the end -- in which Gramm's ethical vagaries are confirmed -- does little to amplify the emotional or moral significance of this utterly derivative conceit.) And every time we get Neil McDonagh on screen, it's a confirmation of how (a) utterly conventional this story is and (b) nobody but McDonagh knows how to play this kind of tripe. When he's on, it's fun. When he's gone, it's deadly dull -- by turns sluggish and silly. It's a genre piece done arty. Kitsch without enough cleverness/artistry to take it into the realm of camp/cheese. But with enough lurid, default misogyny to make the whole enterprise feel gross. Like Pacino's tanning booth face and Elizabeth Taylor wig.