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"15 Minutes"
(Reviewed February 16, 2001)
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This is the sort of completely worthless junk that serves as a perfect example for people who say they hate predictable, violent, stupid Hollywood garbage. In this case, it's as if an utterly talentless writer/director hack were told to produce a hybrid of "Network," "Backdraft," "Mad City" and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," and to be sure that the resulting concoction was boring, obvious and not convincing on any level whatsoever. Considering that only two of those films are worth seeing in their original incarnations ("Network" and "Henry"), well, just imagine the result. Or don't. God, it's bad.
"15 Minutes" doesn't even feel like a real movie, more like two back-to-back episodes of one of those shallow, uninvolving TV cop shows that gets cancelled in six. Robert De Niro cashes another paycheck as a wisecracking but good-natured celebrity cop. Ho-hum.
The always embarrassing Ed Burns is an arson investigator who, in a prime example of the sort of boneheaded dialog at play here, tells a would-be mugger, "I'm an arson investigator. We have the same powers as a cop." Hey, why not tell him your favorite color, while you're at it?
Charlize Theron shows up for two minutes in a very strange black wig as the head of an escort service. One of her hookers, a big-jugged, seedy blond, does a brief topless scene before being brutally murdered by two psychopaths, one wielding a video camera. How nice.
Kelsey Grammer is a TV journalist with no scruples. Now there's an original concept.
Oh, why go on. There is only one good thing about this two-hour trip to Tedium Town. Its ham-handed indictment of the American legal system, in which slimy defense lawyers get guilty clients off using the insanity defense, is totally spot-on. The biggest villain in the film ends up being the killer's lawyer, because he is the character the audience can most easily, and most regretfully, believe is real.
Back Row Grade: F-
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