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tries its hardest to take place in real time once Pacino gets the eighty-eight minute warning, he can't really go a lot of places – we start at the college, then the parking garage, then his apartment, then another apartment, then back to the college – and to get around the logistical problems with that, he spends the entire movie on the freaking phone.
Besides, I never really liked the whole eighty-eight minute conceit anyway. It's not like Pacino is "destined" to die in eighty-eight minutes – it's just that the secret bad guy is trying to mess with him. What if the bad guy gets held up at a red light and has to kill Pacino in eighty-nine minutes? What if the bad guy jumps the gun and sees an opportunity to take Pacino out in eighty-two minutes? It's a completely arbitrary number that only serves to highlight the ludicrousness of the master plan.
And I promise, it's ludicrous in a lot of ways. It's one of those movies where when the bad guy kidnaps one of Pacino's friends, instead of simply tying her up, the bad guy sets up an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys in order to hang her over a hundred-foot drop. Then, in the climax, the bad guy actually says, "I even spent all this time setting up the ropes and pulleys!"
Sorry I keep repeating "the bad guy," but I wouldn't dare give you any clues who he or she turns out to be. Not like it matters; even after the Master Plan is revealed I'm not sure how it could've possibly worked.
And I won't even get into the scene where Forster is being interviewed (again this is on the day of his execution) on live television, and Pacino is somehow able to call into the interview, and then a guard shows up telling Forster he just got a stay of execution...which apparently the movie later forgets about when Pacino reminds Forster he's going to die that night.
There are really two Pacinos. The first is Awesome Pacino of all the classic '70s movies and some solid recent movies like Insomnia. Then there's the over-the-top Pacino of The Devil's Advocate or Simone: still a great actor, but veering dangerously close to self-parody. Guess which Pacino we see in this movie?
As a matter of fact, the whole film is like that. A skilled director could take the same exact script from 88 Minutes, change maybe three or four lines, and shoot it as a spoof movie. It's that close to self-parody.
Movie Grade: D
Synopsis:
In 88 Minutes, Al Pacino stars as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor who
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