The Next Three Days

Review Contains Spoilers!
The final new film we saw in the Film Criticism and Review class was “The Next Three Days.” Russell Crowe plays John Brennan, a man who becomes desperate to break his wife Lara out of prison. Lara, played by Elizabeth Banks, stresses to John that she is innocent of murdering her boss after a fight with him at work. He believes her all the way and takes on a hefty plan of action to break her out. He evens consults a man, played by Liam Neeson, who successfully broke out of prison more than once and wrote a book about it. The film takes place in present-day Pittsburgh. It’s directed by acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Haggis, who was the director of 2005’s Best Picture winner Crash. The Next Three days is a tense drama that is based on 2007 French film Pour Elle by Fred Cavayé.

John goes through some hard, life-changing situations on his quest to set his wife free. He tries to get passports and ends up getting beat down for it. Lucky enough, a man who was in a bar earlier, when he was just beginning to track down some people who could help him, later finds him and gets him what he needs. I thought this was a little convenient. I mean, who knows, but a solution came to his doorstep only a little ways into his endeavor and it just seemed a little too fast for me. He also finds solutions to his other problems fairly quickly, including his money problem. The man that had broken out of prison before had told John that he would need a truckload of money in order to build a new life somewhere far away. He steals a ton of money after a shootout with a gang in a methamphetamine lab that he barely keeps from blowing up, even though the place erupts in flames. John falsifies medical evidence with medical info that he gets from a truck he breaks into by using a hot tennis ball trick, which has actually been disproven by the television show Mythbusters. His wife is transferred to a hospital because of this. He then amazingly subdues a guard outside where his wife is and escapes with her. The suspense throughout the film is good, but I just think that more time should’ve been spent on him trying to figure his plan out. I would’ve loved for details to have been perfected for believability’s sake and for John to have been more of a nervous wreck so that Russell Crowe’s acting could’ve shined.

The acting in the film is good, but I feel that several phenomenal actors were wasted in large part due to the script. Things move too quickly and the characters don’t feel too well developed. The wife has a fit near the beginning, but other than that she doesn’t get to express herself very much. Russell Crowe does a fitting job, but like I mentioned earlier, he doesn’t come off as anyone that really pulls you into the story the way he could’ve. Another actor with an extremely small part is James Ransone who plays Harv, one of the thugs that beats up John early on. Mr. Ransone has been handed amazing roles in Ken Park, The Wire and Generation Kill, but he is totally wasted as a dirtbag who has just about one line.

All in all I wasn’t terribly impressed. Paul Haggis should know better too, being the skilled filmmaker that he is. I haven’t seen the original French movie, but I bet you anything it’s better. That tends to be the case and I’m not sure why. I suppose most remakes are just made out of laziness instead of real intent to make a film better. My final ruling is a 1.5 out of 5.