Chances are if you first see the trailer for The Next Three Days alongside the trailer for the recent Conviction (as I did when I saw The American), you’ll get a sense of Déjà vu. At best, the former film is better than the latter, but maybe slightly at best.
One minute, Lara Brennan (Elizabeth Banks) is discussing with her friends the pros and cons of women working under women bosses. The next, she’s arrested for fatally bashing her own woman boss with a fire-extinguisher. Her husband, John (Russell Crowe), refuses to see her as anything but innocent. And the courts refuse to see her as anything but guilty. Talk about a conflict of interest.
With inspiration from frequent prison escapee Damon Pennington (Liam Neeson, in a one-scene cameo), John hatches a scheme to break Lara out of prison. That scheme involves him going to the criminal underworld for a gun, passports and cash for a one-way trip to South America. But who’ll stop him first, the crooks or two Pittsburgh Detectives?
What the credits barely give notice is that this is a remake of the French film Anything for Her (“Pour Elle”). This American version was written and directed by Paul Haggis, co-creator of the Oscar-winning Crash. It’s a slow film; in fact, it’s frequently quite too slow.
It’s slightly better than conviction because John Brennan, unlike Betty Ann Waters, is not stubborn to the frustration of the audience. And the action here, when it happens, is quite well done. Overall, the only thing that could make this much better than Conviction is if it didn’t drag on so long.
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