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The Rice Thresher
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Kevin Cochrane thresher staff "America likes to watch." So goes the tagline for the new film 15 Minutes. But even now as I write the review, I'm still not entirely sure what New Line Cinema is referring to. It couldn't possibly be trying to use this laconic little slogan as an underhanded way to promote its own film, could it? If so, I yearn for the days when truth in advertising actually meant something. I consider myself to be a component of "America," but no more than 15 minutes into the feature, I realized that 15 Minutes would never approach the quality, scope, profundity or pure entertainment value of other recent cops-versus-robbers-versus-media films. Actually, not only does 15 Minutes pale in comparison to movies like Natural Born Killers and Badlands, but it feels equally unimportant - and just as painful to sit through - as the irksome Dabney Coleman and Burt Reynolds cop films of the '80s. At the center of 15 Minutes is a New York double murder that needs to be solved. But the gratuitously weak story line isn't so much about figuring out the truth of the murder as about following those who control the truth. This is a movie seen through the lens of the media during its insatiable hunt for audience-shocking imagery, no matter what the cost. In 15 Minutes, the cops chase the murderers, the media chases the cops, and the whole thing fuels the killers' (Karel Roden and Ultimate Fighting Champion Oleg Taktaorv) need for sanctity following their personal malfeasance, thus creating a firestorm of emotional fervor. Two-time Academy Award winner Robert De Niro stars as celebrity homicide detective Eddie Flemming, a People cover boy who's acquired a certain knack for handling high-profile homicide cases. But now, with a crime that has ended in a grisly fire, Flemming is forced to team up with one of his rivals: the low-key, media-despising arson investigator Jordy Warsaw, played by Edward Burns. Together, they track down a pair of Eastern European killers on a rampage throughout the city, wrangling with each other over how, or whether, to use the media. It isn't long, though, before Eddie and Jordy are left practically inconsolable; the sociopaths have learned how to spin their own stardom, creating an explosion of media and judicial madness (not to mention pure absurdity). 15 Minutes is nothing more than a glossed-over, contemptuous ruse. It's an artifice that tries over and over again to trick the audience into believing it's a thought-provoking film carrying a powerful message of poignant and profound contemporary social commentary. Writer/director John Herzfeld surely must have employed this chicanery when selling the film to the two leading actors, and apparently, with a certain wide-eyed listlessness, they bought into the sham. In all likelihood, De Niro and Burns affectionately reminisced about Herzfeld's previous effort, 2 Days in the Valley, and ignorantly agreed to sign their self-respect away. 15 Minutes features an ensemble of small-screen personalities - Kelsey Grammer ("Frasier," "Cheers"), Avery Brooks ("Spencer for Hire"), Melina Kanakaredes ("Providence"), David Alan Grier ("In Living Color") and Darius McCrary ("Family Matters"). Why inseminate the screen with countless television celebrities of both the past and the present? Well, in comparison to traditional film actors, your everyday sitcom star is much better equipped to recite banal phrases and act in farcically commonplace situations, which is precisely what the script for 15 Minutes demands. What the filmmakers obviously didn't understand is the extreme difficulty of delivering the primary message of the film when it is hidden beneath layers of age-old stereotypes and tried-and-true Hollywood prescriptions, a few of which I feel compelled to point out. Stereotype No. 1: Europeans are dumb, especially Eastern Europeans. Although our Slovakian antagonists possess the ability to converse fluently in Russian, Czechoslovakian and English, they seem to have stopped growing both emotionally and intellectually about the time their Huggies came off. Stereotype No. 2: If you're from New York, your name must be Eddie. I know it sounds preposterous, but the proof is undeniable: The Hustler, A Bronx Tale, City Hall, True Believer, V.I. Warshawski, Cocktail, Gumshoe, Mancuso, FBI - and now 15 Minutes. I'm eagerly waiting for the day when a brazen young screenwriter brandishes his New York City character with something entirely unexpected and dangerous . like Mike. Every scene pasted to the rudimentary script of this film is either completely contrived (the killer and his developing psychosis) or painfully ludicrous (Burns, the arson expert, unable to tell his apartment has been booby-trapped for a fire). 15 Minutes desperately tries to incorporate a little bit of everything - a sitcom, a deep statement, a buddy pic, and a looming, boisterous and at times darkly depraved atmosphere - and in doing so, the film runs out of time long before it's actually over.
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