On trying to decide upon a movie to see last night, I decided to check out the Rotten Tomatoes review for Al Pachino’s new suspense movie, 88 Minutes. In my history using this particular movie ranking metric, it sets the record for the lowest score I’ve ever seen…a mere 6% at the time.
After spending a few minutes reading the comical and highly entertaining berating by reviewers of all types, my hopes were up at the possibility of having discovered a film of such hilariously preposterous absurdity that it could compete directly with the likes of such triathlons of over-the-top-ness as Van Helsing and The Chronicles of Riddick.
The two of us went fully prepared for a torrent of epic fail, and I was somewhat disappointed that it didn’t happen.
88 Minutes is entertaining, interesting, and well-paced, and uses Pachino’s screen presence as a story focus very effectively. We can both say we enjoy having seen it.
It’s true, certainly, that there are flaws in the movie. Many of the characters are absurdly shallow stereotypes, but have little enough screen time that it doesn’t much matter. The story is very busy, but not unreasonably so for a film in this genre. And it’s hard not to compare the villian’s overengineered final stand to one to Dirk Dastardly’s ill-fated doom-contraptions. But the occassional accidental sillyness lurking around this movie just doesn’t justify the relentless savaging that it received.
The official KRC recommendation: go see it once. If nothing else, it should keep you guessing about who the killer is.
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