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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
1297 Posts |
 Posted - 02 February 2004 : 07:49:22 AM
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Genre Thriller
Rating M
National Release Date 29/01/2004
Length 105 minutes
Main Cast Denzel Washington, Eva Mendes, Dean Cain, Sanaa Lathan, John Billingsley
Director Carl Franklin
Distributor 20th Century Fox
Denzel Washington is in deep you-know-what in Out of Time, a nail-biter from Carl Franklin, who directed the actor in Devil in a Blue Dress. As Matt Lee Whitlock, Denzel plays a good guy who takes a wrong turn for the right reasons and spends the second part of the movie trying to disentangle himself from the mess he’s made.
Matt is chief of police in small-town Banyan Key, Florida, where he’s liked and respected – by most of the citizens. He is estranged from his wife, Alex (Eva Mendes) who’s recently been promoted to detective. Matt is still in love with Alex, but that hasn’t stopped him from having a hot affair with his high school sweetheart, Ann-Merai (Sanaa Lathan), wife of security guard, one-time football pro and all-time bully, Chris Harrison (Dean Cain). There’s no love lost between Matt and Chris, a wife beater who is suspicious of Ann-Merai’s every move.
When Matt finds out that Ann-Merai is terminally ill with cancer, he is determined to get her away from her husband and out of the country to Europe for experimental therapy. To pay for it, he steals $485,000 in drug money, which he is holding in his police safe. Matt’s nightmare begins when the charred bodies of Anne-Merai and Chris are found in their house, which has gone up in flames. The money that Matt gave her seems to have gone with it and a federal officer is on the phone wanting to pick it up.
That’s not all. A neighbour has seen Matt at the scene of the crime - and there’s more damning evidence that will soon be uncovered and point to him as the prime murder suspect, unless he can start to eliminate it and find the real criminal – real quick! One more snag is that the investigating detective on the case just happens to be his wife.
Despite his efforts to cover his tracks, Matt’s plight starts to look more and more like a no-way-out situation and the tension is stepped up in some terrific cliff-hanging moments or, in one case, balcony-hanging! Director, Franklin accelerates the suspense in a number of sequences such as one in which Matt frantically attempts to erase his name from a list of Ann-Merai’s phone callers before an undoctored list is faxed through to his wife. It’s a race against time in which he also has to avoid an increasing number of hostile witnesses that he accumulates along the way. His one friend is Chae (John Billingsley), the town’s medical examiner who also turns out to be the town clown. He sees Matt’s predicament as an adventure that he is all-too-willing to get caught up in for a while.
Moviegoers looking for 100 or so minutes of clammy-hand suspense will surely feel likewise.
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Out Of Time
