88 MINUTES - less straight to DVD than straight to Dustbin

88 MINUTES is a "troubled movie", originally scheduled for release in 2005 it was finally pushed out on the crest of the RIGHTEOUS KILL publicity. It shares the same director, genre and star - Al Pacino. It's also shares the same label, "piss-poor". Once again, we have Al Pacino as a schmoove detective (well, forensic psychologist) running around town trying to find a copycat serial killer. The high concept is that the original serial killer, now on death row, is running the copycat, and has threatened that Pacino only has 88 minutes to live.

You can see how this might've looked all sexy and Se7en on paper, but on screen, this is dull as ditchwater. Pacino runs around town, barking orders to his secretary and a friendly copper on his cellphone. Meanwhile, all the audience has to hold its interest is the increasing volume, and ever-shifting colour, of Pacino's perruque.

In fairness, 88 MINUTES is not as unthrilling as RIGHTEOUS KILL - a movie that revealed whodunnit in the first five minutes. I was guessing who the copycat was till the final reel. The problem is that the reason I was guessing is because the script offered no coherent solution. Rather, we had a series of ludicrously shady suspects - all over-acting hideously - and you could've picked any one of them to finish the picture.

Will Alicia Witt ever work again?
Will Pacino fire his agent and/or perruque-maker?
Here's hoping bad thrillers aren't like buses, and we don't get a third on Friday.

88 MINUTES was released in 2007 in Israel, Romania, France and Greece. It was released earlier this year in Japan, the Philippines, Canada, the US, Taiwan, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, Turkey, Iceland, Colombia, Venezuela and Kuwait. It is currently on release in the UK and is available on Region 1 DVD.

RIGHTEOUS KILL - a thriller so devoid of thrills it is actually impossible to spoil the plot

RIGHTEOUS KILL is a lazy, lethargic, deeply dull "thriller" that will only succeed at the Box Office because of the residual respect audiences have for the early work of Robert de Niro and Al Pacino. We are so infatuated with movies like SCARFACE and THE GODFATHER that we refuse to admit the obvious: Pacino and De Niro are working to pay the bills: applying no quality control to the scripts that they accept; and falling into pastiche of their tough-guy foul-mouthed iconic performances.

As for RIGHTEOUS KILL, this is a movie that declares its hand in the first five minutes. Pacino and De Niro are cops investigating a serial killer. De Niro is shown in flashback, confessing to the murders. He's a vigilante that goes after rapists and paedophiles who walked. These are "righteous kills".

Now, the audience is intelligent. We know we're watching a thriller. If a killer is presented to us inside the first ten minutes, we know he's probably innocent. And if Robert De Niro's character is innocent, and there's another heavyweight actor in the cast, it's going to be him. So after fifteen minutes, you know that De Niro's superficially angry cop is innocent; Al Pacino's superficially in-control cop is a vigilante; Carla Gugino as the CSI who likes rough sex is a red herring; and Fifty Cent is a tool.

Game over. Thank you for playing. Please slip into retirement and stop flushing your reputations down the toilet.

RIGHTEOUS KILL is on release in the UK, US, the Philippines, Greece, India, Romania, Israel, Russia, Taiwan, Estonia, Italy, Sweden and Turkey. It opens this weekend in Finland and Spain and next weekend in France, Denmark and Iceland. It opens later in October in Portugal, Belgium and Argentina. It opens on January 8th in the Netherlands.