Product Details

• Actors: Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Ben McKenzie, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman
• Directors: Jon Avnet
• Writers: Gary Scott Thompson
• Producers: Andreas Thiesmeyer, Avi Lerner, Boaz Davidson, Danny Dimbort, Gary Scott Thompson
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French
• Dubbed: French
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click .
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: September 16, 2008
• Run Time: 108 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001C5LLLY
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,424 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "88 Minutes" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Al Pacino looks startled through much of 88 Minutes, as though taken by surprise at being cast in a thriller that must've first passed across the desks of Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford. Still, Pacino brings his usual oomph to the role of a Seattle forensic psychiatrist, whose testimony secured the death sentence for a crazy serial killer (Neal McDonough). Wouldn't you know it, the very day the killer is sentenced to die, a copycat "Seattle Slayer" is on the loose, and Pacino starts getting ominous phone calls telling him the exact time of his own death. Tick tock: it's 88 minutes away. The film then serves up more red herrings than a Stalingrad fish fry, as possible culprits pop up every five minutes or so (among them an attractive group of med-school students played by Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, and Benjamin McKenzie). Lapses in logic abound, but if you hunker down and zone in on Pacino's weary-eyed, poufy-haired professionalism, you can enjoy the goings-on. (They even make him run up flights of stairs, which one would have thought beyond him now.) Seattle's frequent stunt double, Vancouver, B.C., stands in as a location, and Jon Avnet supplies the slick direction. The cast is talented (including Amy Brenneman), leading you to guess that a lot of people will do anything just to work with Al Pacino. And you've got to admire Pacino's chutzpah at sharing the screen with statuesque actresses such as Brenneman and Sobieski; they tower over him, but he still holds his own. --Robert Horton

Stills from 88 Minutes (click for larger image)

Product Description

A college professor (Al Pacino), who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI, receives a death threat that says he has only 88 minutes to live. To save his life, he must use all his skills and training to narrow down the possible suspects, which include a disgruntled student, a jilted former lover and a serial killer on death row.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 53 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Stale and overdone Pacino vehicle October 11, 2008

By A. Kazimierczak

Format:DVD

88 Minutes is a tried and true "whodunit" shock/thriller clone that may entertain briefly but is at best a guilty pleasure. The story is a Hollywood teaser line: A renown forensic psychologist (Pacino) testifies against a serial killer and then 9 years later on the day of the killer's execution gets a phone call that he has 88 minutes to live.

This may be enough to get Hollywood producers frothing at the mouth and shelling out money, but this is a classic case of a movie that should have stayed a trailer-- the concept fits best into a 30-second package. Watching this movie is like eating a stale doughnut: You see it in the box with all of yesterdays crumbs and think, "That can't be very good, but I want it." You eat it. And then you regret it until the next stale doughnut comes along.

There are 3 main problems to this movie:

1. Pacino plays Pacino: Like Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino is getting old (sorry, but it's true). This movie showcases that by juxtaposing him with a class of young co-eds that he supposedly teaches psychology to and having him flirt with them in a decidedly "dirty old man" way. Never in this movie do you think "This is Dr. Gramm, the brilliant and famous forensic psychologist." No, this is Al Pacino stumbling around and yelling into a cell phone every five minutes. As the plot unfolds (more on that later), Pacino combats the killer with cantankerous "hoo-ha!" instead of a psychologist's keen insight. And after the movie nobody even remembers his character's name; it's just Pacino. That might be ok, except that it's an old, grumpy Pacino who refuses to be filmed opposite a female over the age of 25.

2.... The Plot: This is an Agatha Christie whodunit with all the investigating stripped out and replaced with shock/gore. It starts with the initial murder which has that sicko-rapist creepiness, and then once it gets going with the "88 minutes" it's just one red herring suspect after another (complete with altered flashbacks and ominous music when you see them).

3. Lack of Characters: There aren't any characters in this movie. Period. There's Pacino playing himself. There are a bunch of vapid co-eds. There's a generic serial killer with no personality (other than he likes to kill/rape people). And that's it. Pacino gets a tragic backstory, but it's the same family trauma crap we see in every crime protagonist. Everyone else is just window dressing: victims, suspects, people for Pacino to say "Hoo-ha!" to on the cell phone (I think at its core this is a cell phone commercial).

In short, unless you really like Pacino and cell phones and wonder how much Hollywood makeup can make him look like a leading man again (similar to the morbid curiosity of watching the last Indiana Jones movie), don't rent or buy this movie. Read more ›

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars 88 Minutes Doesn't Deserve 108 Minutes of Your Time November 25, 2008

By James C. Gantt

Format:DVD

About the most complex contribution Jon Avnet's 88 Minutes makes is that it somehow manages to be both predictable and surprisingly disappointing. Writer Guy Scott Thompson, whose other contributions include the TV show Knight Rider (2008), provides a fairly simple plot involving a highly successful celebrity psychiatrist (celebrity in that he's well-esteemed in his small Seattle pond, not celebrity in that he councils the rich and famous) who is slowly stalked (via cell phone!) by a creepy techno-altered voice that may or may not be coming from a copy-cat killer. Pacino, who is entirely miscast here, approaches his Dr. Gramm as if to say, I have played this character a thousand times. Now, what's my line? Typically he is stimulating and brings energy to even the most 2-dimensional roles, yet here he seems only exhausted and disheveled.

Dr. Gramm, despite being quite successful profiling crime scenes and serial killers, has terrible boundaries with his students. He flirts with them, drinks with them, and is out one night with them at a bar celebrating the fact that a serial killer (Neal McDonough) he helped send to death row has lost an appeal for clemency. Soon someone is dead and then we all arrive with Pacino staring out at his classroom, wondering which one of the clean-cut, pretty, model-like actresses is the killer.

It isn't long before we have car explosions and lots of people, including the unknown techno-voice killer, scrambling around and haunting each other on the phone. People jump from behind dark corners in garage stairwells, cryptic taunts miraculously appear, and then characters seem to suddenly get invented and written into the script for no other reason than to serve as "yet another unexpected suspect" who we all know didn't really do it.... Or maybe they did. By the time we are head-first into this thing we don't really care. By the time the real killer is finally presented, we are delighted - not because we are surprised but because then we know that this convoluted and contrived mess that has all of the logic and brilliance of a 90s B-flick (see Sliver) is finally coming to an end. At some point I actually grew as exhausted as Pacino looks and lost interest and started counting how many times his character's phone rang, say, within 5 minutes. That was far more entertaining than the 108 minutes lost watching 88 Minutes. Read more ›

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Awful October 11, 2008

By N. Durham HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

88 Minutes features a "real-time" gimmick, and if that wasn't enough to lure you in, it stars Al Pacino as Jack Gramm; a forensic psychiatrist and college professor who begins receiving phone calls telling him he has, you guessed it, 88 minutes to live. Next thing you know, he's being followed and harassed around every corner, frequently reminded of how long he has to live. Could it be a conspiracy orchestrated by the serial killer (Neal McDonough) that he helped put in jail a few years before? Even though 88 Minutes attempts to throw red herring and twist after twist at you, it won't take you too long to figure it all out. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the film itself is just awful and boring to watch. Pacino just seems so bored with the material here that it's disappointing to see him in this mess, while supporting players including the usually dependable Alicia Witt, Amy Brenneman, William Forsythe, Deborah Kara Unger, and Leelee Sobieski especially are just horrid. Jon Avnet's overly flashy directing doesn't help matters either, and as a whole 88 Minutes is just mind-numbing. All in all, no matter how much of a Pacino fan you may be, these are 88 minutes that are definitely not worth your time.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible Script plus Product Placement Equals Bomb October 11, 2008

By S William Shaw VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

88 Minutes is the story of Dr. Jack Gramm (played by Al Pacino), a forensic scientist who works for the FBI. After providing testimony that puts a serial killer to jail, the killings mysterious start up again. It is here that the story starts.

Without pulling any punches, this movie was horrendous. The script was one of the worst I have had to stomach all year. It was cheesy, horribly written, and provided the actors with so little to work with that it actually made Al Pacino look like a fool.

A couple examples of its foolishness:

1) Early in the movie, Jack Gramm helps a student who has been injured. In 15 minutes (we know because the movie is counting down actual time in minutes), the student manages to allow police to question her, have her injuries treated (we know this happened because she shows up again soon looking great!), go to Gramm's office for files, and show up at an apartment. All this in 15 minutes? In a major city, to boot.

2) Near the end of the movie, the killer allows a woman tethered to a rope to slip down 20 feet. She pulls the rope back up with little effort, and in a few seconds. Later in the scene, the woman slips again, but this time 2 grown, healthy men struggle to pull the rope (and the woman) back up to safety.

Another beef I had with this flick: product placement. Between the non-stop MSNBC promotion, the director slips in Dogpile.com and Terminex ads. Please, no commercials with my movie...thank you very much.

Bottom line...this is one of the worst films I have viewed in 2008. Watch it at your own risk. And then avoid all future films by this writer and director.