NEXT THREE DAYS

“NEXT THREE DAYS” (Russell Crowe & Elizabeth Banks)

Russell Crowe is losing his ‘sure thing’ quality – Not that I didn’t like ‘Robin Hood’, but I can’t remember the last time he made a movie that REALLY impressed me. This one, is probably his lamest effort since ‘Beautiful Mind’ (Sorry,Oscar voters, but it stunk)

I would say that if you like the TV series ‘Breaking Bad’, you’ll like this film – it is just as absurd; here, a mild mannered English teacher becomes a criminal mastermind with the ability to murder practically overnight.

Comparisons have to be made to ‘Conviction’ and I wondered why they didn’t hold off releasing ‘Next 3 Days’ for another 3 months or so since ‘Conviction’ was still fresh in my mind. In ‘N3D’ Russell Crowe’s John Brennan studies to become a notorious criminal capable of breaking his ‘wrongfully convicted’ wife out of a maximum security prison instead of taking the long way by taking 12 years to become her lawyer.

Although it was cleverly executed with some believable touches (i.e., picking up the elderly couple on their way to Buffalo) the script was holier than my favorite pair of underwear. Undermining all the ingenious details John preps for is the fact that he’s an English teacher – a humble, law abiding, loving husband & father that should have never put his wife & son in the dangerous position he puts them in.
That thread kept me from ‘going along for the ride’ – the character John Brennan,
as laid out for the viewer, never WOULD have done the things that adapted- writer/director/producer Paul Haggis has him do. When John buys the gun he needs to break his wife out of jail he picks it up and asks, “Show me where the bullets go.”
That alone tells you this guy is too naive to pull off a caper of this magnitude. Yet, there’s John a few scenes down the road, murdering drug dealers and threatening to kill innocent doctors & nurses that were actually trying to help his wife... To quote South Park’s version of Johnny Cochran, “That does not make sense!”
If they had made John an ex-prison guard turned English teacher, I’d have bought the premise, but it was too far-fetched to believe.

Elizabeth Banks continues to not impress after a promising start in ’40 Year Old Virgin’.
Her character, John’s wife, Lara, should be memorable, but instead she’s quite bland and forgettable – or maybe it’s just because her hair gets darker with each subsequent scene she’s in & I’m partial to blondes so that irked me...

Liam Neeson... boy, talk about bland, unbelievable characters – he’s become the king of those recently – but in ‘N3D’ he only has one scene & he pulls it off nicely. As the ex-con expert at breaking out of prisons, his instructional speech to John is probably the best part of this film.

Then there’s Nicole (Olivia Wilde) an unmarried mother that clearly likes John. Nicole is beautiful, friendly and her daughter & John’s son are best buddies. Personality-wise, Nicole is the complete opposite of the hot tempered, bitchy Lara. Any sane man would have rejoiced that this gorgeous woman entered his life, but not John – he uses her in his attempt to break his convicted murderer wife out of prison. Of course, if he had done the sane thing and dumped Lara for Nicole, it wouldn’t have been much of a story would it? Unless, the insanely jealous, fiery-tempered Lara breaks out of prison by herself and comes after the happy couple... at least it would have made more sense that way.