It’s been a bad day for Police Chief Matt Whitlock.
The sleepy Florida hamlet of Banyan Key is rocked when a young couple falls victim to double-homicide by arson. Complicating matters tenfold, Chief Whitlock (Denzel Washington) was having a torrid affair with the newly deceased wife, Anne. Her and her loutish spouse were on the skids, and Anne was fighting a losing battle against cancer.
Here’s where things get stickier. Anne makes Whitlock the sole beneficiary of a newly revised insurance policy. Worse still, a well-meaning Matt loans (read: steals!) money from the haul of a recent drug bust to help her pay for a high-risk operation that could cure her if all goes well and the price is right.
Not that it matters, though, since Anne and her suspicious hubby go up in smoke before she can flee to Europe for her surgery.
Of course, it doesn’t help the already-incriminated chief that he was nervously stalking around the victims’ house on the night of the fire, but it’s really a hassle when his detective ex-wife (who just happens to be Latina sex goddess Eva Mendes) is on the case. Almost ex-wife, I should say, since the papers haven’t been finalized and the two obviously still have feelings for each other.
Worse than a snooping spouse is the threat of government interference. A testy Fed is suddenly breathing down Matt’s neck for the drug money, which, of course, Matt can’t admit to having lost.
With help from the eccentric city coroner (John Billingsley), Matt must clear his name, stay one step ahead of his prying co-workers, retrieve the cash, get the girl and break dozens of laws before the sun sets on the Banyan Key coastline.
This brings you up to speed through the first half-hour or so of “Out of Time,” a mostly entertaining thriller from MGM and director Carl Franklin. Plot holes and coincidences abound, but a provocative setting and a couple strong performances help keep this train on its tracks. What this white-knuckler lacks in originality, subtlety and believability, it almost totally makes up for in style and well-crafted suspense. Almost.
Sanaa Lathan gives a fiercely emotional performance as Anne, but her part is so poorly written at times that it hardly matters. Nor does it really matter that evil hubby Dean Cain’s capable sneering would be fine in any straight-to-video actioner but is no snug match for Washington’s big-screen smolder.
Or even that Washington, one of the most gifted and watchable of modern actors, seems to be on telegraphed auto pilot, rehashing the cop routines we’ve seen him pull before in films like “Training Day,” “Virtuosity,” and “Ricochet.”
No, “Out of Time” is not about acting or character development. It’s about plot and jerking the audience around on a short leash for almost two hours. Screenwriter David Collard’s characters are merely blinking, sweating pieces in an ever-escalating chess game.
Though the script is weak at beginning and especially at end, the film’s middle passage is a humdinger-a one-man-against-time-and-impossible-odds free-for-all that would have made Alfred Hitchcock atypically animated with envy.
Credit for “Out of Time”‘s best moments must fall to the feet of Carl Franklin, who keeps things clipping along even when the script leaves him stranded on less than solid ground. A sure hand at a hard-boiled thriller (see “Devil in a Blue Dress,” also with Washington, and the excellent “One False Move”), Franklin shows panache for setting the piece’s stifling mood and steamy setting up at the same time. And, he’s great at ratcheting up and lowering the pace when the story calls for both.
As aforementioned, the middle section of the film is especially grand, with Whitlock digging himself deeper into a hole of white lies and felonies as he dodges investigations, destroys evidence, and even swings from hotel balconies in pursuit of one of the lowlifes who may have framed him.
Even if Washington isn’t as crackling as he’s been in Oscar performances past, he’s still adroit enough to shoulder the shifting tones of this star vehicle with ease.
The role is meaty enough to encompass both his powerhouse intensity and his intoxicating charm (that knowing smile still ignites the screen ten times out of ten).
Washington manages to be both vulnerable and piercingly intelligent in the same instant, a necessary combination if the audience is expected to be interested in Whitlock and care about him and the outcome of his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.
Still, the movie is fraught with too many problems to warrant a rave or even a solid recommendation. The exposition is clunky and heavy-handed, and the tacked-on epilogue squanders whatever momentum and integrity accrued during the film’s middle leg in lieu of a pat Hollywood ending that leaves the audience with a sensation akin to intellectual whiplash. All in all, it’s a good ride, well-made and fun to watch, but it only really sails when it’s not trying to beat you over the head with plot and twists.