Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
72 Adela
39 Adventures of Power
78 Afghan Star
61 After the Storm
66 Afterschool
xx All the Best
58 American Casino
72 Amreeka
48 Antichrist
73 Araya
62 Art & Copy
55 As Seen Through These Eyes
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
13 Beautiful Life, A
70 Beeswax
35 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71 Big Fan
66 Black Dynamite
51 Blind Date
xx Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76 Bliss
35 Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57 Boys Are Back, The
45 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
70 Bronson
45 Burning Plain, The
xx Carriers
55 Casi Divas
57 Chelsea on the Rocks
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
59 Collapse
44 Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
67 Departures
xx Dil Bole Hadippa
71 Disgrace
xx Do Knot Disturb
70 Earth Days
24 Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
xx Eulogy for a Vampire
xx Everyone Else
xx Fatal Promises
56 Fifty Dead Men Walking
62 Five Minutes of Heaven
74 Flame & Citron
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
28 Free Style
xx From Mexico with Love
50 Fuel
25 Gentlemen Broncos
50 Give Me Your Hand
58 Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
52 Grace
64 Harmony and Me
81 Headless Woman, The
xx Heretics, The
63 Horse Boy, The
73 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
74 Humpday
94 Hurt Locker, The
29 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16 If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75 In Search of Beethoven
83 In the Loop
61 Intimate Enemies
42 Irene in Time
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
19 Labor Day
xx Laila's Birthday
41 Little Ashes
41 Little Traitor, The
66 Liverpool
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
83 Maid, The
xx Ministers, The
59 More Than a Game
67 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
xx Mystery Team
48 New York, I Love You
73 Night and Day
66 No Impact Man
47 Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34 Other Man, The
xx Painter Sam Francis, The
54 Paper Heart
xx Paradise
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
44 Peter and Vandy
35 Play the Game
77 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx Pretty Ugly People
65 Providence Effect, The
76 Rembrandt's J'accuse
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
40 Shrink
61 Skin
77 Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx Skiptracers
46 Splinterheads
39 St. Trinian's
89 Still Walking
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
55 Storm
65 Tetro
70 That Evening Sun
72 Thirst
xx Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61 Trucker
xx Turning Green
83 U2 3D
66 Unmade Beds
66 Unmistaken Child
70 Visual Acoustics
55 Walt & El Grupo
67 Way We Get By, The
69 We Live in Public
64 Wedding Song, The
64 Where is Where?
xx White on Rice
74 Woman in Berlin, A
69 World's Greatest Dad
70 Yes Men Fix the World
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx You, the Living

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

88 Minutes

EMAILPRINTTriStar Pictures (Sony)

88 Minutes reviews
17
2.9 User Score:

Overwhelming dislike

Based on 27 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 46 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Crime  |  Drama

Written by: Gary Scott Thompson

Directed by: Jon Avnet

Release Date:
Theatrical: April 18, 2008
DVD: September 16, 2008

Running Time: 108 minutes, Color

Origin: Germany / USA

Summary

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)

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.

Read Full Review >
30

New York Magazine David Edelstein

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

Read Full Review >
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.

Read Full Review >
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.

Read Full Review >
25

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Preposterous, empty-headed and tedious.

Read Full Review >
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.

Read Full Review >
25

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A preposterous misfire.

Read Full Review >
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

The average user rating for this movie is 2.9 (out of 10) based on 46 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

k p gave it a4:
Not a very memorable movie, but not as nearly as bad as all the reviews suggest. It's NOT a 17...that's ridiculous. Yes, below average for the genre, but definitely watchable. Not every movie is going to be Casablanca. If you watch it for what it is...a so so thriller...then you'll give it about a 4 or so out of 10 which is what it is.

ts gave it a7:
This was a great action movie and you never see him sweat bravo to the old coot who still has it.

Justin P. gave it a1:
This movie is a thriller without any thrills, a thoroughly mediocre, formulaic, predictable, poorly written film which jumps from cliches to bad dialogues to laughably bad writing all the way until its anticlimactic, irrelevant and uninteresting ending. It is pathetic to see Pacino trapped in this B grade yawner. How could he ever have agreed to act in a movie with a script thats just a hodgepodge of every second rate suspense movie ever made? Sometimes Pacino can salvage an otherwise lackluster picture just with his acting and presence (ie Devils Advocate, Any Given Sunday...) but here he is just one more of the film's annoying and implausible characters. Awful.

Film Watcher gave it a0:
The first scene was so badly acted by the two Asian victims -- I thought this must be a spoof. The second scene wth the bizarrely acted blonde attorney was even worse. Then Al Pacino showed and was BAD in that overblown, bugged eyed and exhausted way he can be . The script is ludicrous and the direction (especially of the actors) is horrendous. Jon Avnet should never be let near another script or camera! What a total mess and embarrassing disaster!

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.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use