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88 Minutes
TriStar Pictures (Sony)

88 Minutes reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 17 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
2.2 out of 10
based on 27 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 32 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

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: Theatrical: April 18, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Germany / USA 

What The Critics Said

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...

50
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.
Read Full Review
40
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.
Read Full Review
38
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
88 Minutes proves itself to be a maddeningly mediocre, ineptly manipulative "real-time" thriller.
Read Full Review
33
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.
Read Full Review
30
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Although it's often laugh-out-loud laughably bad, 88 Minutes is mostly just a slog.
Read Full Review
30
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.
Read Full Review
30
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.
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30
New York Magazine David Edelstein
Forget Pacino; it’s all those red herrings that reek.
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30
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.
Read Full Review
25
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.
Read Full Review
25
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.
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25
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.
Read Full Review
25
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The preposterous 88 Minutes is a serial killer movie starring Al Pacino's festival of hair.
Read Full Review
25
ReelViews James Berardinelli
One of the dumbest thrillers to arrive it theaters in a long time.
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25
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Preposterous, empty-headed and tedious.
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25
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.
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25
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
A preposterous misfire.
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25
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.
Read Full Review
20
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.
Read Full Review
20
Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
One small step for bad filmmaking and one giant leap for the increasing insignificance of the former Michael Corleone.
Read Full Review
20
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.
Read Full Review
16
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Actually, it's pretty much the definition of absurd.
Read Full Review
12
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.
Read Full Review
10
Variety Todd McCarthy
Ludicrous in the extreme, the picture easily snatches from "Revolution" the prize as Al Pacino's career worst.
Read Full Review
0
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.
Read Full Review
0
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A stinker, the more so for the thespian excesses of the accomplished cast.
Read Full Review
0
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.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 2.2 (out of 10) based on 32 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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.

Rae R. gave it a0:
88 minutes of my life forever lost sitting through this implausible, achingly bad bomb. Insofar as I can tell the only redeeming aspect of this film is that its once superb star will take account of just how low one can slip provided the money's good enough.

Rick gave it a0:
If you want to waste 88 minutes of your life ,go see this movie.

carrie l gave it a0:
What a terrible film! And GG DD it says alot about your film taste that you can't even spell "dialogue" let alone care about it.

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