The mystery in "88 Minutes" builds and builds ... and keeps on building after the movie ends because we're not sure how any of it could actually happen. The plot is easy enough to understand, but there are specifics that push the boundaries of suspension of disbelief. It was as if screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson was purposely trying to misdirect us back to a foreseen conclusion; we think all throughout that the final revelation will be unexpected, but it ends up being exactly what we expect. I'm being annoyingly vague, but rest assured you'll know exactly what I'm talking about should you decide to see this film. The end isn't all that surprising, and the events that lead up to the end certainly aren't plausible; "88 Minutes" just kind of rolls with the punches without trying to be original, believable, or satisfying.



The film opens in September of 1997 in Seattle, in which a serial killer breaks into the home of two sisters. Both are silenced with an animal sedative and hanged upside down. The rope is only attached to one ankle; the other leg is allowed to dangle freely. The killer then begins slicing one of the girls with a scalpel until she dies. The other sister is spared because she screams just as the killer opens the door to quiet the hungry cat. The man arrested and charged for the crime was Jon Foster (Neal McDonough), who was finally convicted and sentenced to death based on the damning expert opinion of Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino), a forensic psychologist. As soon as the sentence is read, Foster and Gramm exchange glances, after which Foster ominously whispers, "Tic tock, doc."



The story then flashes forward nine years. Still on death row, Foster continues to maintain his innocence as well as his hatred for Gramm, who he says persuaded the jury into believing falsified evidence. Now a teacher at the University of Northwest Washington, Gramm one day receives a call on his cell phone--the electronically altered voice at the other end of the line tells him that he has only eighty-eight minutes to live. At first he doesn't take the threat seriously, since someone in his line of work receives death threats often. But to be sure, he calls his office and asks his secretary, Shelly Barnes (Amy Brennerman), to contact his provider and have them trace his last call. This is the first in a series of favors he will ask throughout the film; it seems like all he can do is order people to look up names and retrieve information. It gets boring after a while.



Gramm is then informed that one of his students was murdered the night before, and what's worse, it was an exact copy of the murder nine years earlier. This looks bad for Gramm since he was with this student the night she died. A number of other people were also with him, and it's suggested that one of them knows something they're not telling. I dare not say whether or not this is true, but I will say that Gramm receives another phone call later on in class, and his minutes have dropped down to seventy-nine. He now knows that the threat is serious. From that point on, he regards absolutely every character with an air of suspicion, students, employees, and federal agents alike. The audience is also suspicious because everyone seems to be hiding something: some follow Foster's case too eagerly; some are getting too close to Gramm, like his student, Lauren Douglas (Leelee Sobieski); some have that funny look in their eye, like they're ready to shoot someone.



What this basically boils down to is who the killer is, why the killer is trying to frame Gramm, and what this has to do with Foster. The number of red herrings in this mystery is maddening, and this is because they're all the result of suspicious character behavior. One student--Mike Stempt (Benjamin McKensie)--circles around Gramm like a vulture, pressuring him into admitting that Foster may be innocent. Nothing comes of it. A man in leather motorcycle jacket named Guy LaForge (Stephen Moyer) seems to be hunting Gramm down, and we're not sure if it has anything to do with his ex-wife, Kim (Alicia Witt), who happens to be Gramm's teaching assistant. Nothing comes of that, either. At one point, Gramm reports a campus security guard named Johnny D'Franco (Brendan Fletcher) for no reason other than not liking him, and indeed, D'Franco seems like a volcano ready to erupt. Still, nothing comes of it.



So what exactly are we left with if every new direction ultimately brings us back to where we knew it would end up in the first place? We have a pretty bland murder mystery that doesn't bother with realism and doesn't delve too deeply into its characters. We do learn about Gramm's painful past at a certain point, and while I won't describe it, I will say that it doesn't add much to the story other than an excuse to add more drama and cleverness to the plot. There are some tense moments that defy logic, such as when Gramm returns to his car only to find the windows smashed and the words "72 minutes" written across the trunk; you can't help but wonder how the perpetrator knew that he would return to his car exactly at the seventy-two minute mark. But the biggest problem of "88 Minutes" is a mystery that initially gets too mysterious then doesn't end mysteriously enough. Too many false alarms, too few surprises, and an overabundance of characters don't amount to entertainment--they only amounts to a headache.