Running Time
The selling point of Josh Becker's high-concept heist picture is a gimmick: the film is shot in one long, (seemingly) unbroken take à la Hitchcock'sRope. The necessary cuts are actually hidden in whip pans and covered in darkness, but for all intents and purposes it looks like a real-timeYou Are Therethriller, and Becker has obviously put a lot of thought into making it look smooth and effortless. Would that he put that much energy into the collection of neo-noir clichés that make up the script. Bruce Campbell (from Sam Raimi'sEvil Deadfilms) stars as the square-jawed street-smart crook sprung from jail only to heist the warden's illegal skim from the prison laundry. His plan is plotted down to the minute but, naturally, begins to unravel almost immediately. If a junkie getaway driver, a stolen van, and a crime scene cased by proxy isn't bad enough, the bickering criminals blow their cover in front of hostages with a juvenile case of name calling, hardly the work of a criminal mastermind. Played for comedy it might have worked, but Becker presents the improbable escapes and a hokey romantic subplot in all seriousness. With only Campbell's disarming tough-guy performance and Becker's technical bravura to carry the film,Running Timecomes off as an adolescent's idea of a Tarantino movie: naive, implausible, and contrived, a neat idea undone by a bad script.--Sean Axmaker