|
The Next Three Days
| Released |
5 January 2011 |
| Director |
Paul Haggis |
Starring
|
Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks, Ty Simkins, Brian Dennehy, Olivia Wilde, Lennie James, Liam Neeson |
| Writer(s) |
Paul Haggis, Fred Cavayé |
Producer(s)
|
Michael Nozik, Olivier Delbosc, Paul Haggis, Marc Missonnier |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
122 minutes |
| Genre |
Thriller |
| Rating |
12A |
|
|
Jailbreak blues.
It’s a wonder that anything that comes out of Hollywood these days is an actual original script. The studios are already busy remaking virtually every film and TV show from the ‘60s to the ‘90s. Video games, amusement rides and graphic novels are all a popular source of material also. Now even films that look like original stories turn out to be remakes. The original foreign language films they’re based on don’t even have to be particularly well known or even any good. Does anyone remember the 2005 French film Anthony Zimmer? Sophie Marceau (remember her?) was in it apparently. No? Well it was remade as the tortuously dull Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp vehicle The Tourist.
Similarly, The Next Three Days is a remake of 2008 French film Pour Elle (Anything for Her), which starred Diane Kruger but seemed to slip by almost completely unnoticed over here. This version sees Russell Crowe play a man whose wife (Elizabeth Banks) has been convicted of murdering her boss, a crime she may or may not have committed. When all appeals fail and his wife becomes suicidal and his young son (Ty Simkins) quiet and withdrawn, Crowe decides to take drastic action. He plans to break his wife out of prison, but being a mild-mannered college lecturer, he has to get help. He gets schooled by a veteran prison breaker (Liam Neeson in a brief cameo) and tries to formulate his plan to be foolproof. However, there are many bumps in the road and his actions become more and more desperate.
Writer-director Paul Haggis is a specialist in Oscar bait. He wrote the script for the mawkish Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby and the film won the 2004 Best Picture Oscar. Then the following year he wrote and directed Crash, an overblown melodrama about L.A. race relations. In a major shock, it won the 2005 Best Picture Oscar, mainly because the conservative Hollywood establishment didn’t want to give the award to a film about two gay cowboys.
However, it’s unlikely that he’ll need to take his tux out next March for this film, but that is not to say there is nothing to enjoy here. Crowe has chubbied up for this role, a sure sign he wants to be taken seriously and it’s his best, most natural performance in a long while, with the smugness that’s become his trademark mercifully absent. Though it’s an under-written role, Elizabeth Banks is also on good form as the wife. There’s good support too from veteran Brian Dennehy and British actor Lennie James, who’s getting an increasing amount of American roles and is always good value.
As a film, it’s an exciting, well-made thriller that nicely builds up the tension as Crowe’s plan goes into action. However it chickens out at the end, going for a trite ‘Hollywood’ finale in a move that just screams “rewritten due to poor test screening”. If it had stuck to its original devastating ending, the film could have had claims of being genuinely profound and thought provoking. Instead, it's merely just a competently made thriller, a decent piece of entertainment but nothing we haven’t seen before.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, but you sense Haggis and Crowe were aiming for something higher than that.
-
Jim O’Connor |
