"The Next Three Days" Review

The trailer tells the tale:



All that's missing is the details as to how Russell Crowe breaks Elizabeth Banks out of prison. Wrongly convicted - or was she? - of murdering her boss, Crowe reaches out to Liam Neeson (who escaped many prisons and wrote a book and is in exactly one scene) for advice and then plans how to get her out when her final appeal fails. When she is suddenly slated to be moved to another prison, he has only three days to execute his plan.

Written and directed by the most dishonest screenwriter in Hollyweird, Paul "Crash, In the Valley of Elah, Million Dollar Baby" Haggis (which is a gross Scottish dish), it manages to not be as revolting as those stories, but at the cost of being dull and ultimately forgettable. (I'm writing this review on June 24th and can barely remember what it was like.) Crowe is miscast as a desperate husband while Banks is good in a thinly written role. A hot single mom (Olivia Wilde) Crowe meets on his son's playground doesn't even act as a temptation, so why is she here at all? Seriously. I get being all loyal to your wife and baby mama, but she's going away for 20 years or more and OLIVIA WILDE IS RIGHT THERE AND AVAILABLE!! Dude!!!

Finally, without spoiling whether he breaks her out successfully - oh, come on; what do you think happens? - I have to say that getting into Canuckia is a hella lot harder than they show it here. Bah.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.