Just killing time

Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino) is the target of an anonymous death threat in the thriller 88 Minutes. (Chris Helcermanas-Benge/TriStar/Sony Pictures)

You’ve gotta hand it to Al Pacino. When it comes to playing “handsomely haggard,” the guy can’t be topped. Oh, yeah, he’s a great actor, too. He was brilliant a few years ago in Michael Radford’s film of The Merchant of Venice, giving us a quietly powerful Shylock who fairly seethed with centuries of racial and religious injustice. And I’ve been known to drop everything to watch another TV showing of Glengarry Glen Ross so I can savour again the way he brings David Mamet’s profane poetry to life.

88 Minutes, on the other hand, is just a paycheque gig for Pacino. At least, I’m assuming it must be — why else would he bother starring in a second-rate beat-the-clock thriller shot like an episode of CSI? But it’s almost worth sitting through just to see that gloriously ravaged face of his — weary and sexy in equal measure. Dressed in dark colours, his thatch of black hair threaded with grey, he’s like a sleek old panther effortlessly going through his paces. The young actors surrounding him here try so hard (and are sometimes so inept) that it’s almost embarrassing. Pacino outclasses them without breaking a sweat. He can speak volumes just staring at someone with those soulful brown eyes.

There was a time when Pacino’s default setting was the shout. Whenever a script was less than stellar, you could count on him to compensate by chewing the scenery. But that seems to have changed. In 88 Minutes, he just snaps off tiny pieces and tastes them thoughtfully. If he raises that raspy New Yawker’s voice, it’s only because he absolutely has to.

Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a celebrated forensic psychiatrist whose expert testimony put serial murderer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) on death row nine years ago. Lately, however, a series of identical slayings have cast doubt on his judgment. Are they copycat crimes, or is the wrong person behind bars? On the morning of Forster’s scheduled execution, Jack receives a mysterious call on his cellphone telling him he has only 88 minutes left to live. From there, the action transpires in real time — a tidy Aristotelian conceit, although Jack sure goes a lot of places and gets a lot done in less than two hours.

Gramm (Al Pacino, left) doesn't know whether to trust his teaching assistant, Kim (Alicia Witt). (Chris Helcermanas-Benge/TriStar/Sony Pictures)

In his race to track down his would-be killer, Jack realizes that everyone around him is a potential suspect. It could be one of the whip-smart students in his forensic psychology course at the university — maybe Mike (The O.C.’s Benjamin McKenzie), who questions Forster’s guilt. Or possibly Lauren (Leelee Sobieski), who likes to talk about free will (always a bad sign: see Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or Hitchock’s Rope). It could be Jack’s cute teaching assistant Kim (Alicia Witt), who’s packing heat, or her jealous ex-con ex-husband. Or even Jack’s own former wife, Shelly (Amy Brenneman), who still works as his office assistant and all-purpose dog’s-body. The way he constantly fires orders at her into his cellphone, she may well be justified in wanting to off him.

While Forster uses a live telecast from death row to plead his innocence, Jack handles his own death sentence with remarkable sang-froid. You get the sense he’s been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. Pacino’s worn-down, sleepless look has been used more artfully before — especially in Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia, a far superior thriller. But here, it serves as a visual indicator of a past tragedy that still haunts him — the key to why the killer has given him precisely 88 minutes. Or maybe those bags under his eyes are just badges of excess, like Keith Richards’ wrinkles. Jack spent the previous night partying with his students and then went to bed with some babe he picked up in the bar. (The man is a middle-aged-male fantasy figure, after all.)

The movie’s screenplay, by Gary Scott Thompson, is pedestrian and the direction, by Jon Avnet, is workmanlike, but between them they craft a mildly entertaining whodunit. Just pretend you’ve never seen CSI, or 24, or Cracker, or Dexter. (McDonough’s serial killer, like Michael C. Hall’s on Dexter, is a creative psycho with a penchant for scalpels.) The plot is just taut and twisty enough to sustain interest, even if Thompson’s dialogue is sometimes so lame it’s laughable.

Apart from appreciating Pacino’s aging beauty, I came to this movie eager to re-acquaint myself with Alicia Witt. I remember her fondly back in the days when she played Zoey, the tart-tongued daughter on TV’s Cybill, but since then she’s flown under my radar. (I guess I wasn’t going to the right movies, like Kevin Costner’s The Upside of Anger. Oh, wait — did anybody go to that?) As Kim, the TA with a crush on Jack, Witt spends the most one-on-one screen time with Pacino, but benefits the least from his master class in acting. She stares at him like a deer caught in the headlights — or more likely, like a young actress mesmerized by his aura. Well, how can you act with Pacino and not think to yourself, “Wow, this is Michael Corleone, and Tony Montana, and Serpico!” Of course, Witt isn’t helped by the bad writing, or the fact that the director has her do silly things like strip to her camisole while alone with Jack in his apartment — obviously for our benefit, not Jack’s. (What, the guy has 88 minutes to find a killer and he’s going to spend some of that precious time having sex?)

The movie’s least convincing performance, however, is delivered by the city of Vancouver. The story is supposed to take place in Seattle, but the filmmakers can hardly be bothered to sustain that ruse. They stick a few Seattle police department logos on the squad cars, throw in an establishing shot with the Space Needle and figure we’ll be fooled. (Oh, and kudos to the props person who makes sure Brenneman is drinking a Seattle’s Best coffee.) But no, this is Vancouver, all right, looking gorgeous as always in the autumn rain. I had fun picking out the undisguised street signs: Davie, Hastings, even one for the ferry to Victoria!

Why didn’t they just set the story in Vancouver? Well, one little catch — Canada doesn’t have the death penalty.

88 Minutes opens April 18.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.

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