Release Date: October 3, 2003
Starring: Denzel Washington, Eva Mendes, Sanaa Lathan, Dean Cain, John Billingsley
Directed by: Carl Franklin
Written by: David Collard
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (sexual content, violence, some language)
Like John Q in 2002, Out of Time doesn’t deserve the presence of an esteemed actor like Denzel Washington. The two-time Oscar winner doesn’t always need to make powerful dramas like The Hurricane and Antwone Fisher, but you’d think there would be a certain line of quality that he avoids crossing now that he’s established himself as one of the most talented actors in the business. Movies like Carl Franklin’s Out of Time are better left as scraps for the performers still climbing their way up.
This particular film doesn’t suit Washington because it’s a stale thriller that uses too many old tricks, and it’s just plain boring seeing him in such a generic production. The actor has worked with director Franklin before on Devil in a Blue Dress, a noir-style detective film that pitted the his character against a mysterious femme fatale. Out of Time has similar elements, but where Devil succeeded this movie fails. The story here is far less engaging and the characters are hardly as interesting -- though once the audience is made to forget that they should be searching for any depth, the movie moves along just fine.
Things do actually get exciting towards the middle, yet there’s still a strong lack of creativity. As a matter of fact, anyone who is familiar with film noir should be able to guess early on the who the villain is and what that character is up to. While I’ll try to keep things as mysterious as possible, even though that may be relatively pointless, the basic plot outline is as follows:
Matt Whitlock (Washington) is the sheriff for a small town in the Florida Keys, and he’s romantically involved with Ann (Sanaa Lathan), a married woman dying of cancer who needs financial assistance to pay for special medical treatments. Feeling a sense of obligation, Whitlock takes $500,000 confiscated by police in a drug raid out of the evidence locker at work, planning to give Ann the money and repay it long before the government comes looking for it.
Things take a big turn for the worse, though, when Ann and her husband (Dean Cain) turn up dead in a house fire and the money is nowhere to be found. Now Whitlock must cover his tracks very carefully, especially when his own soon-to-be ex (Eva Mendes), herself a homicide detective, arrives on the case.
The big question is, why doesn’t Washington’s character come clean as soon as things turn foul? His cover-up becomes more and more difficult to pull off as the story goes on, and though that’s the source of the movie’s excitement, there isn’t much reason to believe Whitlock would go through all this trouble to hide evidence against himself when he knows he’s not guilty of the murder. He may be trying to hide the affair with Ann from his wife, but at this point we’re not not too sure whether she would even care about that piece of information. If the case is that he still loves her, then why doesn’t he confess everything and ask for her help in finding the real killer? The answer, obviously, is that screenwriter David Collard simply needed to crank out as much tension as possible, and there’s none of that in an honest and straightforward main character.
There are a lot of cheap tricks in Collard’s script. For those well versed in the art of thrillers, very little about any twist or turn should come as a surprise in Out of Time. The entire plot is mapped out very clearly in the first 15 minutes, and the most we’re left to do is wait to see if our guesses are right. The best example of Collard’s laziness is the convenient inclusion of global positioning devices, which all members of Whitlock’s department carry in order to track each other. They’re elaborate gadgets that even New York City police officers wouldn’t be seen carrying, let alone Whitlock’s five-person department in some sleepy, backwater burg in the Florida Keys. But the devices are vital to the movement of the plot since Collard couldn’t think of any other way to let Whitlock’s rescuers know where he is when he finds himself in deep trouble at the end of the movie.
The only moments of Out of Time that aren’t completely dull are due exclusively to the cast. Washington, of course, is worth watching, even though he shouldn’t have been a party to the production in the first place. His role here is similar to those earlier in his career, like Fallen and The Bone Collector, although this character is more bland and much harder to like. His partner Chae (John Billingsley) brings an element of comedy and a sense of relief, because he’s the only person Washington confides in about his situation. Eva Mendes, too, is interesting to watch as her detective seems unsure of whether she should help her estranged husband even though she has little idea of what his current problems are.
These characters are the among the few bright spots of Collard’s screenplay, but their appeal is due to the actors’ charisma, not the writing. The screenwriter cheats far too often, and it’s a shame a star like Denzel Washington played along. There are many better thrillers out there to get your kicks from, so don’t let Out of Time fool you.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)