11/20/10 - The Next Three Days

The Next Three Days (2010, 122 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1458175/

This was another theater selection this month as I decide to go see the new Russell Crowe crime thriller called The Next Three Days. It hadn't gotten great reviews but the genre is one I like and the trailer looked pretty good. Plus Crowe has always delivered and I expected the same this time around.

The movie follows John Brennan (Russell Crowe) as he copes with his wife Lara Brennan (Elizabeth Banks) being charged with murder. John is now tasked with raising their child Luke (mainly played by Ty Simpkins) since Lara will be in prison for a long time. However, John feels that she is truly innocent and with all other options exhausted, he decides to try and break her out. Getting smaller roles are Olivia Wilde as Nicole, a woman that John meets as he is out with Luke and Liam Neeson as Damon Pennington, a man who John goes to for advice on breaking out of prison. There's a bunch of police people as well but none of them really warrant singling out.

The Next Three Days was a very solid movie for me and the main reason for that is that it kept the tension at a good pace. It slowly built throughout the movie as John was getting closer and closer to attempting to rescue Lara. Everything is also believable (well, at least for a movie that is) as John and Lara never really do anything crazy and outlandish except for one time in the car. Other than that, the plot of the escape seems somewhat grounded in reality which I liked. For instance, John uses the internet which might not seem like much but it seems to be something that modern movies don't explore enough. Simply using YouTube to find lock picking advice makes John a little more relatable than had he done something like look this up in a book. Maybe this isn't something I should laud the movie for but when I compare the movie to other recent movies it doesn't seem like basic internet usage is employed when it would make sense to be used. Similarly, John faces difficulties as he attempts to obtain passports and the like since the underground market is just something that he's not really familiar with. This is a guy completely out of his element but attempting to use every resource he can to help out his wife.

Crowe brings out his top-notch talents again in his depiction of John Brennan. Crowe has demonstrated time and time again that he can put himself in the title role of a movie in just about any genre and he shows that in The Next Three Days. He basically carries the entire film with limited interaction until the final act. Simpkins's Luke is prominent in the middle portion of the film and he deserves to be singled out for playing a good young kid. He doesn't flub up anything which is good enough for me in his limited role. He's pretty quiet but it works for him. Anyway, Crowe stands out above Banks or Wilde or Neeson. These three are good but they just don't have to run the gamut of emotions that Crowe does.

The Next Three Days builds until the escape which is obviously the most thrilling part of the movie. Like I've already mentioned, the movie is pretty believable at this point but it's more than that. What I liked most was the whole plan and how simple it was. Honestly, the best plan is the simple plan and while John's is somewhat complex at times, at its core it's really basic. The best part to me was the intricate use of costumes so as to blend in the chaos of Pittsburgh during a Penguins game. I think the absolute best shot in the movie also comes during this escape. Earlier in the film John had been told he needed to get out of basic Pittsburgh in one amount of time and get out of broader Pittsburgh in another time or else they would lock everything down and it would be impossible for him to escape. Anyway, at one point in the movie John is forced with deciding to go back and get his son and miss the time limit or get out now and make the time and be safer. It's boiled down to a simple shot where he faces a fork in the road and has to go either left or right. There's a long pause during the shot and this is probably the highest point of tension in the whole film as everything peaks really well. It's simple but it works - just like the plan.

Another minor thing that The Next Three Days does right lies within Lara Brennan's character. Throughout the entire time that she's in jail, she's shown very rough and dogged. I can't say for certain that there's a lack of makeup but I can easily say that Elizabeth Banks is not her usual pretty self. Again this goes back to the believability thing that I think The Next Three Days does really well. Obviously, Lara doesn't have access to top-notch beauty products in jail and this is reflected. However, the moment they break out it seems as if they stop at a beauty shop along the say as she suddenly regains her good looks. Anyway, I applaud that Banks chose to look so haggard for the role but it would have been nice had it continued throughout the final act.

Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. The Next Three Days has a lot of positives as it seems to do a lot of minor things right. All in all though it's hard to put the film up there as high as some other heist movie or escape film. Everything comes together as all the interlocking pieces work which is necessary for this genre but I don't feel like anything in The Next Three Days is great or exceptionally good and for this it gets the 6/10 score.