88 Minutes (2007)
Average Rating: 2.6/10
Reviews Counted: 122
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 116
88 Minutes is a shockingly inept psychological thriller that expertly squanders the talent at hand.
Average Rating: 2.6/10
Critic Reviews: 34
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 33
88 Minutes is a shockingly inept psychological thriller that expertly squanders the talent at hand.
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Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 103,146
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Movie Info
Jon Avnet directs Al Pacino in the thriller 88 Minutes. Pacino plays university professor Jack Gramm, who occasionally assists the FBI in matters of forensic psychiatry. His recent testimony against a freshly convicted criminal seems to be the reason he has gotten a scary phone call informing him he will die in 88 minutes. As with the like-minded thriller D.O.A. (both the original and the remake), the protagonist must use his skills in order to track down who has hatched this evil plot and
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Cast
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Al Pacino
Dr. Jack Gramm -
Alicia Witt
Kim Cummings -
Leelee Sobieski
Lauren Douglas -
Amy Brenneman
Shelly Barnes -
William Forsythe
Frank Parks -
Deborah Kara Unger
Carol Lynn Johnson -
Benjamin McKenzie
Mike Stempt -
Neal McDonough
Jon Forster -
Leah Cairns
Sara Pollard -
Stephen Moyer
Guy LaForge -
Christopher Redman
Jeremy Guber -
Brendan Fletcher
Johnny D'Franco -
Michael Eklund
J.T. Ryker -
Tammy Hui
Janie Cates -
Vicky Huang
Joanie Cates -
Victoria Tennant
Kate
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88 Minutes Trailer & Photos
All Critics (123) | Top Critics (34) | Fresh (7) | Rotten (118) | DVD (3)
Now that this stupendously inept serial-killer flick has slithered into theaters, the diminutive legend had better clear room in his closet for another cinematic skeleton.
If you like your women half-naked, strung upside-down from pulleys, and sliced like deli meat, this is the movie for you. Whether the victims are more tortured than the plot is a serious question.
Nothing would give me keener pleasure than to reveal the identity of the killer, but a day after seeing the film I have genuinely forgotten.
It's quite possibly the worst movie of 2008 so far.
The galumphing serial-killer picture 88 Minutes is dumb enough to be straight out of the parodies in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
The preposterous "88 Minutes" is a serial killer movie starring Al Pacino's festival of hair.
Lacking tension in its setting and empathy for its characters, 88 Minutes is a woeful excuse of a thriller thanks to the inept direction by Jon Avnet, who has forgotten to inject emotion and thrills in what can only be described as a bloated crime movie.
88 Minutes is the sort of overblown thriller in which every action, no matter how insignificant, is pregnant with portent, yet it's a film of nothing but red herrings.
Serial killer thriller runs out of time, momentum.
Don't bother
The overwrought production, sieve-like plot and ludicrous characters merge into something genuinely hilarious. But that's clearly not what cast and crew were going for.
Ridiculous and ultimately disappointing thriller that stays just about watchable thanks to an amusing pair of performances by Shouty Al and his hairpiece.
THE WORST FILM OF THE YEAR.
Pacino looks half asleep throughout, no doubt concentrating solely on his cheque, while the script is a catalogue of clichés and contrivances.
Good Sunday afternoon entertainment but it won't hang around the multiplex for long.
Full of dreadful turns and awful dialogue ("There's been a breach in my most secure area!" mutters Al at one point), 88 Minutes is 107 too long.
It's called Eighty Eight minutes. But, in fact, it's one hundred and seven minutes of your life that you lose should you persevere with this witless thriller.
Interestingly, the more overblown and insincere a performance Pacino delivers in a film, the more self-important and bouffant his hair gets. Here, it's so towering it takes up 90 per cent of the screen.
There are more thrilling ways to spend 88 minutes, like counting from one to 5,208.
It verges on so-bad-it's-good territory, but just isn't entertaining enough. Lacking in tension and pace, poorly edited and starring wholly unsympathetic characters, this is just dull, drab and boring.
The kindest thing one can say is that director Jon Avnet and screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson bought a flatpack version of a thriller and then couldn't follow the instructions. Manuals can be confusing.
Pacino is better than this, and I can't believe he needed the money. (Blu-ray Edition)
The movie runs blandly through its paces without generating an ounce of tension or suspense.
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Top Critic
The film had enough action and a still-got-it Pacino at its core, but it undercut every exciting scene with lengthy explanations of what was going on, which repeatedly killed the flick's momentum. What would also be interesting would a culprit with a motive, or an actor with more talent than Leelee Sobieski (that would be an actor with any talent whatsoever). The worst part of the film was the purported climax, and unfortunately, it overwhelmed the few bright spots the film had shown so far. Beyond Pacino, this one's a dud.