5ive Days to Midnight

This is an awesome movie. I taped it when it was on television and I liked it so well I bought the DVD. It is one of those movies I can't get enough of and I have watched it several times.

The actors are fantastic - that little girl is a magnificent actress. Timothy Hutton really shows what he is capable of. I was not familiar with Kari Matchett, but I would like to see more of her work. Randy Quaid was perfect as the stereotyped detective.

The soundtrack (which I am still trying to find) is great - perfectly placed songs and music. The music enhanced the film rather than just disappearing into the background.

If you have the opportunity to get the DVD, do. I watched the commentary and although I don't usually like to watch those (I hate knowing the secrets - I want to keep the magic), I did thoroughly enjoy the information. Their methods of shooting with multiple cameras and the time sequencing was explained and I'll always wonder why every film isn't made with multiple cameras. It really elevated this movie into an unforgettable film.

I highly recommend this film to anyone. Don't be turned off if you don't like Sci-Fi - this is a movie for anyway who just wants to escape into an engrossing story.

Timothy hutton plays physics professor JT Neumeyer who while visiting his wife's grave discovers a thin silver brief case.

He opens it and discovers a group of files showing pictures of his death and newspapers clippings.

First declaring this as a practical joke, the events in the files play out slowly and now convinced that he'll die in five days, tries to find a way to prevent himself from dying and must change his destiny.

The concept is great despite being a bit derivative, and there's plenty of room for tension, suspense, and great bits on philosophy, but the screenwriters miss their chances.

The cast is comprised mostly of second rate actors with the exception of Hutton who tries his best at the lead role but ultimately fails towards the end of the film as he manages to go way over the top with his emotional scenes.

There's also Randy quaid who is quite bland and one-dimensional, and Angus McFayden who is the worst of the characters as the over the top mob boss Roy Bremmer. Watch for his really bad scenes as he attempts to inflict depth into his character but comes off as laughable.

Meanwhile the story has the ability to inject tension and sense of immediacy but all of it is loss in the bogged down story. Rambling and droning at some points it's difficult to understand why this couldn't have been a two hour film instead of a four parter.

There's also plenty of room for philosophy and the concept of destiny and fate towards death, but there's nothing here as the story is mostly comprised of uneventful occurances, slim character development, and so much dialogue.

While the film is engrossing at the beginning, it's ultimately lost halfway through as the plot is segued into the benign plot featuring McFayden which takes away from the actual reason why we're watching.

"Stay tuned for the shocking last minutes to 5 Days to Midnight" the Sci-Fi channel boasts which never usually works on me but I was rather interested to see where this was developing. But, unfortunately it was all just hype. I was expecting that Neumeyer's daughter would accidentally shoot him causing his death, and that we never got to see who sent the briefcase, but it's all pretty much explained in the end and nothing of the sort happens.

I wanted an ironic, witty, and shocking ending beneath the muddled plot and droning dialogue, but alas we're not given anything but an obligatory and rather disappointing happy ending.

Decent performances, a great concept but falls apart halfway through becoming routine and cliche. The writers never give this story and concept a chance to spread its wings and just keep it down to mediocre level.

** out of **** stars.

Yes, we watched enthralled; at least the last episodes. We felt it was too much special effects, all too moody music, and way too much time wasting melodrama. Knowing we had a four hour stretch to weary our way through, we took our time until we knew we were near the denouement, at which point we watched more closely and could then feel the excitement building.

But remember: it's television. Television is made in an entirely different way, no matter the artistic ambitions. This would never work in a watered down two hour format at the theatre - it just plays as television. If you're all right with television, fine; if television leaves you flat and wanting to see real cinema instead, this 'movie' will leave you flat too.

The device of this movie demands a 'conceit' - and a consequent suspension of disbelief - that you either buy into or else you won't like the whole thing much.

After a night of sleep we woke mostly feeling we'd wasted our time. It's not so much the movie makers' fault - remember: it's television.

Kudos to SCI FI Channel for a great mini-series!

I enjoyed the four days of wonderful suspense and time-loops drove me crazy guessing. The Sci-Fi boards were abuzz with over 700 posts!

The whole concept of giving watchers the clues online to begin to make their guesses as to the ending was a brilliant touch of intelligence at work!

I won't give any endings away - but I will say that if you watch this you will not be sure until the very ending exactly how it ends.

Timothy Hutton was the star and he handled it with aplomb. The great supporting cast was headed by Randy Quaid and Kari Matchett. Hamish Linklater was wonderful as the manic Physics student as were Angus MacFadyen as the mobster and David McIlwraith as the brother-in-law.

But the major acting discovery was GAGE GOLIGHTLY as Hutton's daughter. She was marvelous in every scene she was in and stole the limelight from whomever was with her. Natural talent like that is to be appreciated. Not to mention her remarkable resemblance to the young Drew Barrymore. It would be interesting to see Drew Barrymore in a prequel-sequel of this mini-series - if she weren't probably overpriced for SCI FI channel?

All in all - we were kept on our seats for 4 wonderful days of suspense, trying to outguess the wonderful writers. Kudos to all of them!

I recommend this highly for mystery and suspense buffs. Not just Sci-Fi fans. It's a winner!

Rating: ** out of ****

The two-hour Sci-Fi Channel made-for-TV movies may almost always suck, but you can usually rely on their miniseries for quality acting, writing, and special effects (I loved Taken and Children of Dune, really liked Dune, and there is nothing currently on TV that can compete with the new Battlestar Galactica). Five Days to Midnight breaks the channel's success streak, proving to be easily its worst miniseries to date.

5DTM stars Timothy Hutton as J.T. Neumeyer, a physics professor with a young daughter (I forget the actress's name, but she looks a lot like a young Drew Barrymore) and a life insurance agent named Claudia for a girlfriend (Kari Matchett). While visiting his late wife's grave on a Monday morning, his daughter discovers a briefcase nearby. Upon opening the case, J.T. is a little shocked to discover that the contents are files pertaining to his own murder, which will occur in five days, at 3:55 A.M. on Friday.

He initially laughs it off as a hoax, but when a few of the little "prophecies" come true, he becomes a fast believer and sets out to find out who would murder him and why. He has only a few clues, but there is a list of suspects: Carl Axelrod, an eccentric student of his; Brad, his financially desperate brother-in-law; Roy Bremmer, a man he's never even heard of; and even his own girlfriend Claudia, who is not all that she appears to be. With the clock ticking down and only the help of a homicide investigator (Randy Quaid), J.T.'s obsession with saving his own life may come at the cost of many others.

Undeniably, 5DTM boasts one of the niftier premises in recent memory. Playing like a mix of Minority Report meets 24, the combination of sci-fi and mystery has always appealed to me, so there's no question that a good portion of the miniseries is genuinely engaging and entertaining (mostly in the beginning and middle segments).

A lot of the series is intentionally predictable, and in a fun way, like you just know that gift from his girlfriend will be the same parka he wears in that photo from the briefcase where he's lying dead, or the car his girlfriend rented will be that green Cherokee in that other photo, and so on and so forth. 5DTM also has fun with the implications of possible time travel and the changes one could set forth in the fabric of time. I was also thankful for the fact that a lot of the characters actually caught on to the possibility of time travel quickly and even accepted it without much question.

There are a lot of decent to good performances, especially Timothy Hutton, who capably handles the functions of a likable everyman. The girl who plays his daughter is terrific as well, and Kari Matchett would be a dead-on match for Naomi Watts if she had a smaller nose and slightly larger cheeks. Angus Macfadyen makes for a menacing villain as Bremmer, who's so evil he clearly can't be Neumeyer's killer.

Unfortunately, the miniseries begins to stumble by the second half of 'Day 4,' and is just a complete and utter mess by 'Day 5.' The writers can't seem to be able to keep much consistency in the film's concept of time travel. Without giving much away, when certain changes are made to the timeline in the film's climax, newspaper articles and photos from the future are also altered to fit the new timeline (kind of like in Back to the Future), and the changes occur immediately. However, in 'Day 2,' Neumeyer changes a woman's fate, preventing her from getting killed by a collapsing tree. After this change in time, his daughter then reads all the newspaper articles from the file the next day, which still state that the woman died because of the tree. Wouldn't that portion of the article have been altered?

The climax is just terrible (moderate spoilers in this paragraph), with every major suspect conveniently converging in the same location with murder on their minds. Just as bad, at least three of the potential killers wouldn't have even targeted Neumeyer if not for the intervention of the briefcase itself, and the one suspect that continuously threatens his life also seems most likely to the deed, but a tacked-on, idiotic surprise revelation completely disregards that possibility, placing the blame firmly on one of the characters that wouldn't have killed him if not for the briefcase's intervention. I can't think of any plausible reason this person would have killed Neumeyer prior to the appearance of the briefcase, but a bullet that conveniently fits into a gun is supposed to lead us to believe it was this one character all along.

The identity of the killer is perfectly predictable, since it's always the person we're least likely meant to suspect. Even though I came to the realization very early, I still doubted myself because, as stated earlier, there's just no reason this person would have any true motivation to kill Neumeyer without the briefcase.

It's unfortunate, but with such an awful ending, I just can't go out of my way to recommend 5DTM. It's not the movie's only major flaw, the miniseries is constantly padded to fill its allotted running time, and the director goes insanely overboard on the choppy slow motion, often ruining any developing suspense or momentum. Had the miniseries been about forty-five minutes to an hour shorter, I might have said yes as a video rental, but unless if you've got lots of time to kill, this isn't rewarding enough to spend the time and money.