By Armond White

88 Minutes
Directed by Jon Avnet


Let 2008’s 10 Worst List begin. Leatherheads and Funny Games are already listed. 88 Minutes is the latest nominee. Al Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, a Seattle-based professor of forensic psychology who is threatened by convicted rapist and serial killer, Jon Foster (Neal McDonough). Though facing execution, Foster reaches out beyond prison walls, tormenting Gramm and everyone he knows with an 88-minute countdown to his own death.

Although Pacino brings authority and goodwill to every project, he’s too forthright to be a playboy forensics don, surrounded by suspiciously fawning students and nubile women who suffer grotesque mutilations. Plus, director Jon Avnet photographs Pacino too close: Behind the haggard face, all we see is unctuous sincerity. Gramm isn’t merely a feminist-mack-daddy genius, he’s also motivated by a rape-and-murder family tragedy (alluded to in lyrical flashbacks and a pumped music score). I bet it was the grieving monologue that hooked this wonderful actor. “It took him 88 minutes to hack her to bits, so I left New York for the other side of the continental U.S.A. to see if I had a second act in me.” Terrible thing is, Pacino gives it soul.

He also gives it stamina. 88 Minutes plays like a script Tom Cruise rejected back in the ’90s, forcing Pacino to run—across campus, across town, through parking garages, up and down stairs. When he isn’t winded, he makes two bids to join the “Attica! Attica!” and “I’m out of order? You’re out of order!” catchphrase canon: Gramm pleads to Foster, “How about it man, GIVE ME CLOSURE!” and his solace to a distraught co-worker, “If I can’t forgive you, I don’t deserve you.” Excess action. Excess unction.