15 Minutes ««
R, 120m. 2001
Cast & Credits: Robert De Niro (Detective Eddie Flemming), Edward Burns (Fire Marshal Jordy Warsaw), Kelsey Grammer (Robert Hawkins), Avery Brooks (Leon Jackson), Melina Kanakaredes (Nicolette Karas), Karel Roden (Emil Slovak), Oleg Taktarov (Oleg Razgul), Charlize Theron (Rose Hearn), Kim Cattrall (Cassandra), David Alan Greer (Mugger). Written and directed by John Herzfeld .
The previews for 15 Minutes left me with the impression this will be a buddy/cop movie where you have the seasoned celebrity detective played by Robert De Niro being reluctantly paired up with an arson investigator played by Ed Burns to help solve a murder case.
That’s exactly what happens through much of the film’s first hour. Instead of being more about the relationship between the two partners, however, the movie seems more interested in what a couple of perverted sleazeballs (Karel Roden, Oleg Taktarov) from Eastern Europe do while in New York.
For almost two hours, 15 Minutes follows the vacationers’ trek in the Big Apple who after failing to collect a debt, decide to make a snuff film recording all the murders they commit in hopes that Hollywood will one day make a movie about them.
"I love America," says Emil (Roden) after watching a news segment about a former inmate whose life story will be chronicled on the big screen. "No one is responsible for what they do."
Here is where director/writer John Herzfeld (2 Days In the Valley - 1996) makes a fatal mistake. Why write a script and in turn, make a movie about two brainless, murdering thugs where it’s a good bet not a single person in the audience (those in their right mind that is) are going to possibly like much less root for? This is like hoping Dr. Hannibal Lecter will successfully evade law enforcement in hopes he will return again in a follow-up to feast on the living in another “Hannibal” film.
15 Minutes boasts an impressive cast who besides De Niro and Burns (Saving Private Ryan - 1998) also includes a list of talented personalities whose work up until now has mostly been on network television shows. Even Roseanne gets a cameo as host of her own talk show (does she really have a show of her own?).
There is Kelsey Grammer of NBC’s Frasier (1993) who along with his handsome appearance and deep authoritative voice the public can trust is perfect as a tabloid television anchor of the Big Apple’s number one rated show called “Top Story”. His belief on getting high ratings is just what you expect to hear from such egomaniacs of investigative tabloid television shows.
"If it bleeds, it leads," he barks out to his new producer who is played by Kim Cattrall (HBO’s Sex and the City - 1998).
Also on hand are Melina Kanakaredes (NBC’s Providence - 1999) in her big screen debut as an on-the-spot news reporter and love interest of De Niro’s and Avery Brooks of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) as another partner of De Niro’s. There is also comedian David Alan Grier as a mugger.
Grier’s big scene comes in the second hour when he is interviewed by Grammer’s character of how he was handcuffed to a tree by Burns after unsuccessfully attempting to hold him up for money in New York’s Central Park. He tells all the children watching that not all firemen are racist.
As usual, De Niro makes great use of all his screen time from giving Burns a hard time to finding new ways on how to propose marriage to the Kanakaredes character. He is like the media driven detective Kevin Spacey played in L.A. Confidential (1997) whose name was always mentioned in the Hollywood tabloid magazines.
The film’s memorable moments unfortunately come from the villains. Emil figures out how the American justice system works as he downs bottles of Tylenol. At one point, he mentions "the Double Jeopardy law" where criminals can’t be tried for the same crime twice (do you think maybe he saw the Ashley Judd movie, Double Jeopardy - 1999?)
His partner, Oleg (Taktarov), on the other hand, is so transfixed by what he shoots on the camcorder he ripped off that he can’t get the names of the movies he’s seen straight. (Instead of Silence of the Lambs (1991), he calls the film, “Silence of the Sheep”).
I couldn’t wait to see these two get what was coming to them and by saying that, I’m not talking about them doing time in prison. Yet after two hours of sitting through this unsettling and predictable mess of a film, I still wasn’t happy with the outcome.
The movie reminds me of a comment a criminal judge said here in Dallas a few years ago after he sentenced one of two former Naval cadets to 40 years in prison without the possibility of parole for murder.
"There were no heroes in this case," he said.
By comparison, there are no heroes in 15 Minutes either; only losers.
©3/28/01
R, 120m. 2001
Cast & Credits: Robert De Niro (Detective Eddie Flemming), Edward Burns (Fire Marshal Jordy Warsaw), Kelsey Grammer (Robert Hawkins), Avery Brooks (Leon Jackson), Melina Kanakaredes (Nicolette Karas), Karel Roden (Emil Slovak), Oleg Taktarov (Oleg Razgul), Charlize Theron (Rose Hearn), Kim Cattrall (Cassandra), David Alan Greer (Mugger). Written and directed by John Herzfeld .
That’s exactly what happens through much of the film’s first hour. Instead of being more about the relationship between the two partners, however, the movie seems more interested in what a couple of perverted sleazeballs (Karel Roden, Oleg Taktarov) from Eastern Europe do while in New York.
For almost two hours, 15 Minutes follows the vacationers’ trek in the Big Apple who after failing to collect a debt, decide to make a snuff film recording all the murders they commit in hopes that Hollywood will one day make a movie about them.
"I love America," says Emil (Roden) after watching a news segment about a former inmate whose life story will be chronicled on the big screen. "No one is responsible for what they do."
Here is where director/writer John Herzfeld (2 Days In the Valley - 1996) makes a fatal mistake. Why write a script and in turn, make a movie about two brainless, murdering thugs where it’s a good bet not a single person in the audience (those in their right mind that is) are going to possibly like much less root for? This is like hoping Dr. Hannibal Lecter will successfully evade law enforcement in hopes he will return again in a follow-up to feast on the living in another “Hannibal” film.
15 Minutes boasts an impressive cast who besides De Niro and Burns (Saving Private Ryan - 1998) also includes a list of talented personalities whose work up until now has mostly been on network television shows. Even Roseanne gets a cameo as host of her own talk show (does she really have a show of her own?).
There is Kelsey Grammer of NBC’s Frasier (1993) who along with his handsome appearance and deep authoritative voice the public can trust is perfect as a tabloid television anchor of the Big Apple’s number one rated show called “Top Story”. His belief on getting high ratings is just what you expect to hear from such egomaniacs of investigative tabloid television shows.
"If it bleeds, it leads," he barks out to his new producer who is played by Kim Cattrall (HBO’s Sex and the City - 1998).
Also on hand are Melina Kanakaredes (NBC’s Providence - 1999) in her big screen debut as an on-the-spot news reporter and love interest of De Niro’s and Avery Brooks of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) as another partner of De Niro’s. There is also comedian David Alan Grier as a mugger.
Grier’s big scene comes in the second hour when he is interviewed by Grammer’s character of how he was handcuffed to a tree by Burns after unsuccessfully attempting to hold him up for money in New York’s Central Park. He tells all the children watching that not all firemen are racist.
As usual, De Niro makes great use of all his screen time from giving Burns a hard time to finding new ways on how to propose marriage to the Kanakaredes character. He is like the media driven detective Kevin Spacey played in L.A. Confidential (1997) whose name was always mentioned in the Hollywood tabloid magazines.
The film’s memorable moments unfortunately come from the villains. Emil figures out how the American justice system works as he downs bottles of Tylenol. At one point, he mentions "the Double Jeopardy law" where criminals can’t be tried for the same crime twice (do you think maybe he saw the Ashley Judd movie, Double Jeopardy - 1999?)
His partner, Oleg (Taktarov), on the other hand, is so transfixed by what he shoots on the camcorder he ripped off that he can’t get the names of the movies he’s seen straight. (Instead of Silence of the Lambs (1991), he calls the film, “Silence of the Sheep”).
I couldn’t wait to see these two get what was coming to them and by saying that, I’m not talking about them doing time in prison. Yet after two hours of sitting through this unsettling and predictable mess of a film, I still wasn’t happy with the outcome.
The movie reminds me of a comment a criminal judge said here in Dallas a few years ago after he sentenced one of two former Naval cadets to 40 years in prison without the possibility of parole for murder.
"There were no heroes in this case," he said.
By comparison, there are no heroes in 15 Minutes either; only losers.
©3/28/01
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