If the serial killer maintains his position as the favorite villain in the fiction and film of our time, then his counterpart, the so-called profiler (often a psychologist or psychiatrist) serves as an appropriate nemesis. The contest between the two dominates a considerable number of books of fiction and nonfiction, several television series, and enlivens many of those true crime documentaries that ooze all over the cable channels. (Despite all the publicity, the profilers and their colleagues in law enforcement, who deserve no credit for the capture of such contemporary serial killers as the Son of Sam, the Unabomber, and the D.C. snipers, actually can't catch a cold on a wet night.)

The new movie "88 Minutes" approaches the duel between murderer and sleuth from a slightly different perspective, showing the profiler himself as the intended victim of a criminal he helped convict. Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino), a university professor who also works for the FBI as a forensic psychiatrist, testified against a psychopath who tortured and mutilated young women. In the last hours before his death sentence, the killer accuses the doctor of framing him and vows to make him suffer the same fate he faces.

After a prologue showing the crime and the courtroom testimony that resulted in the conviction, the movie proceeds in the real time of the title, beginning with a telephone call to Gramm, informing him that he has only 88 minutes to live. Although he initially dismisses the messages as the work of a crank, subsequent calls continuing the countdown convince the professor of a genuine danger. A series of incidents - threatening graffiti, his car vandalized, then blown up, and a murder that copies those of the convict - intensifies his dilemma while also casting suspicion on him.

The circumstance of a protagonist simultaneously attempting to elude danger, pursue a criminal, and avoid the police understandably creates an atmosphere of excitement and suspense, entirely appropriate to the traditions of the thriller. Gramm must not only flee a particular menace and track down his adversary but also solve a puzzle, so that the thriller adds the dimension of the mystery story as well. His tense and complicated situation engenders a sense of paranoia, so that he begins to suspect everybody around him, from a whole classroom full of graduate students to his knockout of a dean.

The camera collaborates with the protagonist's suspicion, drawing the audience into an identification by moving in a series of tight closeups from face to face in his classroom, then showing additional faces, all looking quite fishy, in the several flashbacks to Gramm's previous night. Ultimately the psychiatrist's world appears full of menace, where he can trust nobody, except for his remarkable secretary (Amy Brenneman), who tracks down all his leads and inadvertently provides the answers to the puzzle.

The movie sustains its high level of tension throughout, setting its often furious action against the picturesque background of Seattle and the posh interiors of the professor's world. In keeping with another Hollywood tradition, Pacino's character suggests that professors, especially experts in forensic psychiatry, enjoy a wonderful lifestyle - he runs his consulting business from a fancy suite in a high-rise building, occupies a spacious, comfortable office at his university, lives in a magnificent apartment, and drives a Porsche. On top of all that, he works with a dean who looks more like a model than an academic, a refreshing if remote possibility in college life.

The slick surface of the film, its collection of attractive suspects, the nicely maintained suspense provide the requisite entertainment, but the accumulation of implausibilities tends to undermine its emotional impact. The solution of its central mystery demands a more than usual suspension of disbelief, and the complicated scheme behind it hardly approaches anything like credibility.

Like a lot of mysteries, "88 Minutes" solves its problems with a hurried and artificial explanation that then leads to a highly sensational conclusion, demonstrating that the sheer progress of the thriller often overwhelms the logic and validity of its premises. Al Pacino's increasing desperation and the urgent pace of its real time, however, create enough excitement to negate much of its improbability. 

88 Minutes

(R), directed by Jon Avnet

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