I saw 88 Minutes the other day over at Anthony’s house. It was… well, let me put it this way: I felt sorry for Al Pacino getting stuck in this movie. Yes it was bad. Nominally set in Seattle, it was clear that much of it was filmed in Vancouver and not Seattle. The black street signs are a dead giveaway!
I’m not sure what the script writers, casting, or director were thinking when this movie was made. The script is a “pot-boiler” as I like to call it. Wildly unrealistic, not terribly interesting and sometimes downright insulting to your intelligence. The flashbacks are especially egregious in this regard.
So Al Pacino plays a criminal psychologist who also teaches at the University of Northwest Washington (a few outside shots were of the UW campus which was cool). Years earlier he was instrumental in getting a death sentence conviction of a mass murderer (Neil McDonough). That guy never forgave Al for that.
Then one day, on the day that Mr. Bad Guy is to be put to death, a student of Al’s gets murdered in the same fashion that was Mr. Bad Guy’s M.O. Then Al gets a mysterious phone call telling him he has 88 minutes to live. More people turn up dead, all the physical evidence pointing to Al! Al’s car gets blown up too! Lots of people are suspects for Al, especially the mad-looking dude that seems to be watching him for some reason! Oh and the campus security guard is also veeeery suspicious. Everybody seems to be out to get poor Al, who has, “tick-tock”, fewer and fewer minutes to live!
Then the mad-looking dude, who is the ex-husband of Al’s research assistant (played by Alicia Witt) is suddenly killed in a gunfight by the real bad-guy. Conveniently enough, the bad guy is wearing a motorcycle helmet with a dark visor to prevent them from being ID’d. Oh and Al’s condo is set on fire too.
Spoiler Alert: Eventually we find out who is doing this. Is it a team of people hired by Mr. Bad Guy? Nope! It’s one of Al’s students who also is a lawyer and on Mr. Bad Guy’s defense team! One! Yes, this female student is a one-woman car bomber/lesbian seducer/motorcycle rider/evidence planter/call girl hirer/call girl killer/almost psychology department dean killer/general all-around bad-ass. The government should have hired her because she’s a one-woman killing machine better than James Bond!
Don’t worry though. She ends up dead as is proper for all bad guys.
The worst part for me was that Al’s gunhandling skills were a joke! It was painful to watch!
Anthony picked up on the fact that everybody in the class was thin and attractive. Even the dean was a rather young, quite attractive woman!
We did have fun ripping on the movie, though so it wasn’t a total loss. And the company was good! 
For the rest of you, avoid this movie.
3/10
