88 Minutes

Oct 3 2008 By Graham Young

FOR THE second week running, after Righteous Kill, there’s a new Al Pacino thriller on offer that’s directed by Jon Avnet.

As I pointed out last Friday, he’s an unlikely choice to make one film in this genre after Fried Green Tomatoes and Up Close and Personal, never mind two.

Running to almost 20 minutes longer than its title doesn’t help any more than the sluggish beginning and daft ending.

Pacino plays college professor Dr Jack Gramm, a forensic psychiatrist who has to learn how to stop himself from being dead within the two hours promised in a ‘Tick, tock, doc’ phone call.

He’s hosting a morning seminar on criminal behaviour at the same time as serial killer John Forster (Neal McDonough) has a final appeal on Death Row.

But is Gramm the real murderer in town if he ‘psycho-babbles innocent people into the death chamber’?

Written by Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast and the Furious), it’s all too contrived to have real appeal.

And that’s without the cast freewheeling along with such abandonment that Pacino’s hair has time to change colour en route.

Website: www.sonypictures.com