Tick, tick, tick … boring

88 Minutes, the new thriller flick starring Al Pacino, starts out with two attractive female roommates getting ready for bed. The camera focuses on a Seattle newspaper with a headline about Princess Di’s murder, apparently to let us know the year is 1997. Then, in case we didn’t get it the first time, the camera gives a close-up of the newspaper date of September 1, 1997. Then, in case we really didn’t get it the first time, one of the roommates puts on the Backstreet Boys’ “Quit Playin’ Games With My Heart” before she goes to bed.

Then a mysterious figure silently enters the apartment, knocks the women unconscious, ties them up, and rapes and murders one of them. Then we’re in a courtroom, and Al Pacino (What’s his character’s name? Who fucking cares?) is giving testimony against a menacing-looking dude, opining that he is criminally insane. Menacing-looking dude gets found guilty. Then Al Pacino is getting out of some woman’s bed in a swank condo under the superimposed text “Nine years later.” DUN, DUN, DUN.

That synopsis of the first 10 minutes of 88 Minutes is a pretty good representation of what the whole movie’s like: None of it really makes any sense, but darned if it isn’t interesting.

What really makes 88 Minutes intriguing is that it’s directed and penned by Jon Avnet and Gary Scott Thompson, respectively–two men who have both done far more producing work than they have behind a camera or a keyboard. And it shows. 88 Minutes is chock-full of fast-paced mystery, intrigue and plot holes big enough to drive Kanye West’s ego through. Its characters are completely unbelievable and classically narrow-minded.

They also make the most ludicrous of choices at the whim of the plot. My favorite is when Al Pacino sits down with his TA-turned-sidekick to explain to her in detail why he moved to Seattle and became a forensic psychologist. This would be less questionable if Pacino wasn’t on the run from a deranged serial killer (who has given him, you guessed it, 88 minutes to live), and also proves to be markedly adept at anticipating and foiling his every move. But I guess ya gotta smell the roses every once in a while.

Yet, on some weird twisted level, 88 Minutes is OK. The filmmakers do a good job of keeping the plot on its feet, never letting the viewer get too comfortable as to where the action’s going. The ending is satisfactory but not mind-blowing, and Pacino has some decent moments of relaxed badass-ery, all making up for the movie’s incredible inattention to anything logical.

For example: Most of the movie ostensibly takes place in real time (full running time is 106 minutes, not 88), but the action is pretty much anything but. Cross-town drives take the time of a paltry conversation, and characters go up multiple flights of stairs in a matter of seconds. This is particularly amusing considering the phone calls Pacino keeps getting every few minutes informing him how long he has left to live.

I guess they figured the viewers would be too engrossed in the thrilling drama to catch such details. And they do get a few minute points down. For example, it’s set in Seattle, so the sky’s always overcast. That’s a good one. The sign for the lottery ticket center is reflective of Washington State’s–oops! Actually, the lottery sign is Canadian, because they filmed 88 Minutes in Vancouver. The highway signs to Victoria kind of give it away, too. Um. Well. The guns are cool. Al Pacino shoots a door. Nifty.

88 Minutes is decent if you’re looking for a straight-up thriller that’s not going to try to get too far into your head. True, it’s vapid to the point of inanity, but this is plot-driven writing at its worst. The holes of logic are so stark and blatant that it should have Charlie Kaufman scrambling to write Adaptation 2.