The movie opens with the initial gruesome murder followed by the damning testimony. Time jumps ahead a number of years to execution day and our psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino), receives a call telling him he has 88 minutes to live. The fun begins as the new murder is uncovered and Jack is tormented by these phone calls and the appearance of the updated time limit pretty much wherever he goes. Will he figure it out in time?

This leads to one of the biggest problems: the script. It tries way too hard to be edge-of-your-seat thrilling and not hard enough in developing the characters. Jack is given a reason to suspect all of his students, as well as a few other people who just happen to get in the way. It is all a little much.

What is needed are fewer suspects. Those who still are need a little better development. Then there is the development portion of our story. None of the characters are interesting. We have no reason to care. When things happened to the characters, I had no reason to be concerned about their fates. This is a major issue for Pacino's character. We get flashes of his guilt about his sister, but they do nothing to further his depth. It just keeps hammering home the point home we got the first time.

Ugh. The person behind the set-up is relatively easy to figure out. That is an easier task than trying to discern motivations. The title, and that initial call, seem to point towards Pacino's imminent death at the 88 minute mark, however, there seems to be a big push towards merely framing him, all while people try to kill him at every turn (including a runaway fire truck).

Which is it? Do you want to frame him or kill him? And couldn't you have at least given any of the characters something good to say?

This really is bad. The acting is terrible, although that may be the fault of the screenplay. The direction is generic. The writing is bad, and enough cannot be said about that. Still, I could not tear my eyes away. I wish I could. The train wreck was just too interesting in a "My brain is dying and I don't care" sort of way.

Bottomline. Al Pacino's phoned-in performance, and the lovely Alicia Witt, make it bearable - but only barely. This movie sat on shelves for over a year (having reached DVD in Germany in early 2007), and with good reason. Something tells me it should have remained on the shelf.

Not Recommended.