Movie Review:

Out of Time

    If one breaks it down very simplistically, there are two kinds of movies in the thriller genre: the movies where the thrill comes from a series of unexpected twists, and the moves where very little is particularly surprising and the thrill comes from seeing exactly how things will play out.

    It's easy to mess up either kind, of course - few movies are so solid conceptually as to be incredibly difficult to mess up - but it's particularly easy in the latter case.  All it takes is a lack of tension, not always the easiest thing to create - especially when the plot twists are easy to foresee.

    Credit goes to director Carl Franklin and star Denzel Washington for keeping Out of Time from falling into that trap, at least for part of the way.  While it is hardly a perfect film - in particular, it is swollen with contrivances - it is diverting enough and maintains enough tension to be reasonably solid entertainment.

    Matt Whitlock (Washington) is chief of police in Banyan Key, a small town near Miami.  His estranged wife Alex (Eva Mendes) is a homicide detective on the same force, and his lover Anne (Sanaa Lathan) is an old girlfriend now married to ex-pro quarterback Chris Harrison (Dean Cain).  Matt is also pals with the medical examiner, Chae (John Billingsley), who provides the obligatory sidekick/comic relief role.

    The extent of Whitlock's job appears to be checking to see that storefronts are locked, but he was recently involved in a massive drug bust, the evidence money from which he is keeping in the safe.  When Anne tells him she has terminal cancer, he takes the money and gives it to her, assuming that with the appeals process he won't need to produce it for years (by which point he'll have collected on her insurance policy, once she names him the beneficiary).  Things go bad in a hurry, however.  Anne (who doesn't really have cancer, of course) and Chris fake their deaths, leaving a mountain of evidence pointing to Whitlock and the DEA breathing down his neck over the evidence money, which is now missing.  Whitlock is forced to track down the money while trying to bury the evidence against him, which Alex, as part of the homicide investigation, is simultaneously working to dig up.

    The contrivances are, perhaps not surprisingly, many.  Does it seem likely that in a town of less than 2,000, not a single person would have known about Whitlock and Anne's relationship?  Or how about that people Whitlock has known well since high school would suddenly turn and use him for an insurance scam without him ever suspecting that they were the type to do that?  The investigating officer happens to be Whitlock's wife, so she's more hesitant to throw the book at him?

    It doesn't matter that much, though.  The slow setup is as big a problem as any of the contrivances, and while both detract somewhat, they operate independently of the tension, which delivers in a big way.  Watching Whitlock's machinations, as he squirms to stay one step ahead of both the DEA and his wife, is enjoyably nerve-wracking, and Washington is in good form - watching him is watching a man who knows the door is preparing to shut, and he's running as fast as he can toward the end of the hallway.

    As is to be expected, Washington stands out.  Mendes and Lathan are both passable but are stuck in Bond-girl-dualism roles, while Cain is effectively sleazy but has a pretty small part.  Billingsley is relegated to either expository or comic-relief duties - he works pretty well in the latter, but when was the rule instituted that all leading men in action or thriller movies have to have goofy friends ready with a wisecrack, anyway?

    It makes mistakes along the way, and the payoff is a bit cliché, but enough of Out of Time is a gripping yarn that overshadows most of the film's more egregious faults.  It's not often one can see a decent diversion propelled by one of our generation's best actors, after all.

   It hardly resonates, but Out of Time is worthy fare.  B

Out of Time is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release.  Rated for sexual content, violence and some language.