Crowe And Banks Have Character Issues, Director Haggis Falls Short On Key Moments, But That Last Half-Hour Moves Like A Freight Train And It Shows Us That Every Minute Counts During "The Next Three Days"

"THE NEXT THREE DAYS" ☆☆☆ 1/2

This might be rare, but I usually don't disagree with the consensus of critics (though not yet audiences), who here mostly dislike director/writer Paul Haggis' jailbreak suspense film "The Next Three Days," where Russell Crowe is John Brenner, a college professor who finds the means and the how, and the guts what he needs the most, to break his wrongfully convicted wife out of prison. And not legally, either, after the courts, and Daniel Stern (Daniel Stern!) as the Brenner trail lawyer called it quits and gave John the "do not pass go" card. But a college professor!? And who after he nearly gets convicted for wrongly playing with a broken bump key pukes out of near-getting-busted nerves? Can we believe a mild-mannered school teacher with anxiety can successfully beat the system, passing all road checkpoints in what Liam Neeson's stodgy con man Damon Pennington says will be 15-35 minutes to bypass all those police roadblocks before it's locked down, there's no way out, and it's game over? Can we honestly believe that? Well, I say I can believe Russell Crowe, who fought the invading French in Medieval England and won, who hunted down notorious heroin gangster king Frank Lucas and won, and not only out smarted him in the end, but got the former mob don to help put all his gangster buddies and rivals behind bars. And Maximus! Come on! The man beat and defined The Roman Empire! It's why we can believe him, that Russell Crowe is today's heavyweight leading man, and he can carry a movie, pack the punch, even make us sympathize, better than any leading actor right now. If anyone can free the woman he has undying loyalty to, and have enough time for a quickie on the car ride hightailing it into Canada, then that's a guy to take seriously. (I was kidding about the quickie. Only Chuck Norris would think to do something so dangerous and risque at the same time) I won't tell you if he succeeds or not - that he may get his wife out of jail, but into a safe haven without being captured - but the movie does. 

I'll say it: Even with some of the problem areas that are bringing a lot of critics down, I really liked this movie. It's at it's best a really edgy and fast-moving suspense ticking-clock, and never more so in the show's last quarter as Crowe's qualmish, but determined John Brenner and Elisabeth Banks as imprisoned wife Lara escape the confines of the jail walls, race against time in those precious 15-35 minutes to beat the borders before they close, and have to outsmart a Lieutenant and several detectives who are hot on their trial from the moment they hit go, and where John may have been the smarter to out fox them all. I say that's satisfying enough, for a pretty rousing climax to what is really a genre action jailbreak movie (the human drama matters, too, don't get me wrong), where everything leading up is but bread crumbs, and Haggis, and his editor Jo Francis, really fly through it (an editor, by the way, who has the chops to do an action feature, and a first, after doing TV); and composer Danny Elfman helps to set the pace. People say it enough, but I'll say it here, I was on the edge of my seat (though not literally), and my heart was beating all the while. And I even felt nauseated! (Now I'm just pushing it) But it all works to that degree. So the movie has it's shortcomings. John does stuff that's kind of stupid, Lara's behavior doesn't make sense at first, she isn't given enough scenes for us to care whether she gets out or not, and what should be key dramatic moments of relief and dire realization didn't have as much punch and weren't considered as much as Haggis did with the jailbreak. But, what a jailbreak! 

But for an exciting movie like this - and I think that's where I disagree with everyone else - who cares!? If a movie manages to excite you, for that rollicking last act, and did as the story was setting the pace, then racing along, gaining traction, until you're actually into it and you really started to care if Lara was caught, if John was sent to jail with her, and if their son Luke went without parents. So, the first some-odd half-hour was weak, but it really pays off when John takes that photo at the resolution, after when we first see Lara snapping that photo then is suddenly taken away, when a horde of officers flank and storm the family kitchen, arrest a flabbergasted Lara, restrain a upset John, and snap evidence photos as distraught Luke sits at the table, crying. And when Luke finally kisses her mother again, at the end, when Lara says that he may have never done so again or seen her the same way, and that she'll spend the rest of her life as a jailbird convict. As sappy as that seems, it works, and it had meaning at the end. We suddenly cared about these characters, and even though that beginning half was weak, it was at least set up right. 

And that beginning first half-hour, though: After Lara's arrest, however, the movie does lose some of that meaning, some of it's punch, when we have a hard time believing Lara is so calm for it from the start (even though she loses that resolve later on), and when we didn't see anything at all of the court proceedings. If we could have stayed with John, Lara and Luke through those defining hours and days, hanging on every second, like the show does for the next three days, then we wouldn't need to see those court cases. But it didn't help that the scene after Lara's arrest in that kitchen we are already months down the road. Now, there's some wasted drama. 

And John. I'll believe he's a somewhat non-common-sense junior college professor, and that he is indeed Russell Crowe, but why did he do some of the dumbest things? Chat up a guy about how to break out of a maximum security facility, in a restaurant, in public? Shopping around for someone to manufacture fake passports and I.D.'s, from one clueless drug dealer to another, buying from them, and continuing to do so, continuing to try to find the hookup guy, and leaving all his bought pills and bags in the passenger seat for any passing cop to see? Then researching on Google? Learning from YouTube tutorials? This isn't child's play, man! Your breaking your wife out of prison, for God's Sake! John might have did less had he watched "Cool Hand Luke" or "The Great Escape" for pointers. 

(SPOILER ALERT! And robbing those drug dealers, and what I felt was completely wrong he ends up killing those guys. Why does he suddenly have the guts to do it, and not puke right afterward like he did with the bump key? That scene was a nifty suspense set piece, but way out of the ballpark for a character who we shouldn't believe is ready to kill just yet, or at all. He's a convicted felon now! What does that make him? We should think that helps with the drama, but as I feel it really ends up not making sense.)

And there are scenes in that beginning which could have really packed an emotional wallop and hit our hearts cords early, when we needed to feel so soon, but didn't surprise us the way we should. Lara's arrest was good, but what about that first prison visit, or the next one, or when we learn of her unalterable fate? Well acted by Crowe and Banks, especially that speechless, tearful scene between the looking glass, but they didn't resonate enough. 

But soon, all of it starts to make sense, and even make us feel for John and Lara even more, when John finally does figure it all out, and really does have the ultimate plan in place to stay a step up the creek from those Philadelphia PD's, and he does, and the movie starts getting better. When the silly, sensitive college guy does something no one convict or Harvard smartie or jailbreak artist (except maybe Pennington) can accomplish, and when that sighing Lieutenant finally says, after it's all over, "A teacher did this?," we believe it. It's an underdog thing. As much as we now care whether John succeeds, and now whether suicidal, manic Lara (who even goes as far as to say she did it, with misplaced intensity) makes it out, we care for the everyday man to triumph at the impossible. The ordinary hero in extraordinary situations. That applies here, and we should do no less then cheer once the credits roll (SPOILER ALERT! and their all safe in Haiti). We would if we weren't on the edge of those seats. But not literally. 

"The Next Three Days," is a well written and directed by Haggis, and though he falters with that beginning setup and character troubles, he makes up for it once we get to the meat of the movie. Jailbreak, baby! And, should I mention, Crowe is just as superb a leading man as he is in every other movie he takes on, really making us believe that an idiot teacher can do the unthinkable. And Banks, once Lara started to lose hope, really showed her waning resolve as the movie progressed, as little as we did see of her in that first half. There isn't much of a supporting cast here, but Daniel Stern is pure lawyer bullshit, Brian Dennehy is the sure quiet softy of a dad, and Lennie James (who I got to see work, in a very similar role, in "Colombiana" last summer) had that relentless mean cop vigor we all like to see put up against our on-the-run protagonist (was anyone better than Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive?"). And I always like there is a potential love interest in a movie by Paul Haggis, after Charlize Theron's smart detective to Tommy Lee Jones steadfast dad looking for his missing son, and doesn't become a love interest, thank god!, and here doesn't become one to John. Granted, that would ruin his whole motivation. And why would Tommy Jones go for Theron when he was already married? Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but it ruins the potential for good drama, okay. 

But I'm glad Olivia Wilde was nothing more than a friend to John, in the one or three scenes she has. She's not much of a character (there goes saying there was a strong female presence in the movie and that she wasn't used as sex toy), but was really only a character tool to be used so Luke had somewhere to stay when everything was going down (why couldn't he just stay with granddaddy Brain Dennehy?) 

I think I'll quit the argument for this movie for now, if I made some sense or not, but I might think of something later to add (times I had wished I had a notepad and pen in the theater, and maybe a solid memory bank), or even reread all this and do some editing. But if you should leave this review page with a one thought, know that "The Next Three Days" is worth your time and money. It isn't one of the best movies out this year, or this fall, as we should expect from Paul Haggis, the Academy Award-winning writer and director of movies like "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash," but the movie is solid. It sports a good cast, good writing and good directing. Again, that setup was slummy and man, I kinda wish John Brenner was a little smarter. Maybe he should have been a former detective, like Tommy Lee Jones. But, that would take away from the appeal of the character and the story. The ordinary man in the most extraordinary situations. Steven Spielberg would be proud.