As the opening credits roll here, you find yourself wondering just why this barely slipped out straight to DVD. Directed by Jon Avnet, Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Deborah Kara Unger, Leelee Sobieski, William Forsythe, Amy Brenneman … I only needed the names of Pacino and Witt earlier this year to make me think, “Oh dear … just how bad can this be?”

The answer is … not bad at all. I found this to be a near-perfect thriller, with aspects of the real-time Johnny Depp movie Nick of Time but also a neat questioning of the value of forensic evidence akin to the commentary on the death penalty in The Life of David Gale. There’s a line from Pacino, “Truth and justice – where do the two intersect?” which could apply to the revenge movies I’ve watched in the past couple of days. Witt and Pacino are fantastic, as are the supporting cast – Sobieski quite relishes her role in particular, and what else can I say? It kept me gripped.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 8:24 pm in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as detective, murder, mystery, realtime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.