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88 Minutes
TriStar Pictures (Sony)


2.7

based on 27 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 38 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for disturbing violent content, brief nudity and language

Starring Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, Deborah Kara Unger, Benjamin McKenzie, and Neal McDonough

In 88 Minutes, Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he must use all his skills and training to narrow down the possible suspects, who include a disgruntled student, a jilted former lover, and a serial killer who is already on death row, before his time runs out. (TriStar Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Crime \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Gary Scott Thompson
DIRECTED BY:	Jon Avnet
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 16, 2008 Theatrical: April 18, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	108 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Germany / USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

If you're like me and think that any Pacino movie is sort of worth seeing, so long as he never says, "Hoo-ha," then 88 Minutes won't be a total disappointment.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The picture is humorless and witless. The barrage of allegedly important details is supposed to keep us intrigued, but it barely keeps us occupied.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

88 Minutes proves itself to be a maddeningly mediocre, ineptly manipulative "real-time" thriller.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

This business of the 88 minutes ticking away is a pale imitation of the old "High Noon" ploy of playing out suspense in real time. After a while, though, I began to take a perverse pleasure in wallowing in the awfulness of it all.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Although it's often laugh-out-loud laughably bad, 88 Minutes is mostly just a slog.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Not merely Pacino's over-mannered, near-histrionic performance, but the movie itself could be characterized as busy, busy, busy. It's so full of plot twists and revelations and exploding sports cars that its very perkiness comes to seem comic.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Compare 88 Minutes with "Sea of Love," another murder mystery that Pacino made, in 1989, and you find him sporting the same loud ties, but everything else has leached away: suspense, credibility, wit, and the lost art of flirtation.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Forget Pacino; it’s all those red herrings that reek.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Al Pacino chews up so much scenery it's surprising there's any left by the end of this fetid thriller.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

I'm guessing it's the pressure of an idiot script by Gary Scott Thompson and understandably clueless direction from Jon Avnet that forces Pacino to ham it up so vigorously that you want to garnish him with cloves and a slice of pineapple.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This is easily one of the silliest, most preposterous thrillers ever made, and the only reason it didn't go straight to video has to be that it stars Pacino.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

I've seen Pacino over the edge. This is not it. He looks pooped and pickled. Maybe being the only thing standing between a megaplex opening and a trip straight to the $4.99 bin at Target wiped him out.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The preposterous 88 Minutes is a serial killer movie starring Al Pacino's festival of hair.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

One of the dumbest thrillers to arrive it theaters in a long time.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Preposterous, empty-headed and tedious.

USA Today Claudia Puig

This may be the most preposterous movie of the year. It is certainly the most ridiculous movie starring an Oscar-winning actor.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A preposterous misfire.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Every actor and actress involved seems to have been instructed to act as guilty as possible and, in this at least, they're entirely convincing. Not guilty of murder, perhaps, but of a really unfortunate career choice.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

This ridiculous thriller would be hard-pressed to last much longer than its title in theaters before doing time on DVD, as is already the case in many overseas territories.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

One small step for bad filmmaking and one giant leap for the increasing insignificance of the former Michael Corleone.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Attica! Attica! Everyone involved in the creation of this muddled, joyless, and deadly dull serial killer-meets-forensic psychiatrist snoozefest should be forced to spend – at the very least – 88 minutes behind Attica's bars.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Actually, it's pretty much the definition of absurd.

New York Post Kyle Smith

88 Minutes holds you in a state of acute suspense, keeping you wondering until the very last minute whether this is the worst Al Pacino movie ever made.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Ludicrous in the extreme, the picture easily snatches from "Revolution" the prize as Al Pacino's career worst.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

We may have to sit through worse films to come this year, but with any luck, there'll be none as guilelessly, idiotically misogynist as this one.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A stinker, the more so for the thespian excesses of the accomplished cast.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

This slimy, slug-minded mystery thriller starts out dead on arrival and then, like three-day-old fish, gets really bad really fast.

The average user rating for this movie is 2.7 (out of 10) based on 38 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Quinn C. gave it a10:
This was the best movie i ever saw in my whole life. Pacinio is the greatest person ever, he makes me want to pull out my shlong and start jackin it whenever i see him. This is a good movie to get off to!

Deanna gave it a2:
This movie was simply terrible. Whether it was the far-fetched plot, or the pathetic acting, this movie was simply impossible to follow and a bore the whole way through.

Jay H. gave it a4:
Amazingly far fetched plot riddled with holes and makes the mistake of making the main character so unlikeable you don't care if he dies in 88 minutes or not. To bad the title didn't refer to the length of the movie. Just because Al Pacino is in the film doesn't mean it's good. How quickly Bobby Deerfield, Gigli and Cruising were forgotten.

Fantasy gave it a0:
Thanks for coming we stole your money. That's what the title should be. It's awful. Enough said!

Eadie M. gave it a5:
While far from Pacino's best, this film is entertaining and holds attention, even if some of the plot is implausible (that's nothing new in today's films) and the editing uneven. It deserves more than the 17 critics gave it. If a film holds you till the end it deserves more than 0.

Bigga J gave it a0:
They should have called the movie "Out of Time" because you need enough time to recover afterwards and that might make your weekend seem short.

Chad S. gave it a3:
Al Pacino turns 68 in late-April. He's a geezer. But there goes the legendary actor of stage and screen, throwing a girl-more-than-half-his-age, down onto the ground, when his character Dr. Jack Gramm intuits that a bomb is about to go off. Tic-toc, tic-toc. Gobble, gobble. Tic-toc, tic-toc. Gobble, gobble. Probably not since Martin Brest's "Gigli" has a major studio film received such savage reviews by the print media. This time, however, there's some merit to the bad publicity. For starters, "88 Minutes" discards its own premise. Dr. Gramm has eighty-eight minutes to live, according to his caller, but numerous attempts are made on his life, well before the eighty-eight minutes are up. If Jack dies, how will Jon Forster(Neal McDonough) get off death row? The convicted murderer needs Jack's confession, right?But to get back where I started from for a moment; it's Kim(Alicia Witt) whom Jack throws to the ground during one of those attempts on his life. Pacino is 68, maaaan. It should be the other way around. Jack is the one who needs protecting. He's a senior citizen. After Kim is accused twice(!) by her mentor of being an accomplice to his impending murder, the TA defies common sense and hangs around. Why? So Jack would have a sympathetic ear handy as he tells the origin story of the prescribed time that he has left to live. All the women in "88 Minutes" are either trollops, or idiots.

88 Minutes TriStar Pictures (Sony)

88 Minutes
TriStar Pictures (Sony)