The Next Three Days (2010)
Directed by Paul Haggis
Life seems perfect for John Brennan until his wife, Lara, is arrested for a murder she says she didn’t commit. Three years into her sentence, John is struggling to hold his family together, raising their son and teaching at college while he pursues every means available to prove her innocence. With the rejection of their final appeal, Lara becomes suicidal and John decides there is only one possible, bearable solution: to break his wife out of prison.
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The original French version, which translated as " Anything For Her ," only came out a few years ago, and I'm curious to see how they told the story.
Adapting the highly successful French thriller, "Anything For Her" for an American audience, Paul Haggis writes and directs and delivers one of the more gut-grabbing suspense yarns we've seen this year.
The Next Three Days, Paul Haggis' adaptation of the 2008 French film, Anything for Her, uses an interesting concept as a cornerstone of the foundation.
A remake of the 2008 French film “Anything For Her,” it tells the story of a mild-mannered man whose wife is falsely convicted of murder and decided to bust her out of prison.
His story is based on a 2007 French movie called Anything For Her and some of the hallmarks of morally conflicted French cinema shine through, but Haggis manages to put his own stamp on it.
Directed, written by Paul Haggis, based on the film "Anything for Her" (Pour elle) directed by Fred Cavaye, written by Cavaye, Guillaume Lemans.
The movie's best scene, in which Crowe's character encounters an author played by Liam Neeson, subliminally nods to "Taken," the action thriller starring Neeson that became a breakout hit two years ago.
When John interviews an Irish author famous for having escaped imprisonment seven times, and that man turns out to be a grizzled Liam Neeson, visions of a more rugged, streamlined, Taken -esque version of the film are apt to begin dancing in one's head.
With just a one-scene cameo, Liam Neeson (2009's " Taken ") gets out while the getting is good as wall-hopping writer Damon Pennington.
The buzz: Writer-director Paul Haggis (“In the Valley of Elah,” “Crash”) is working from a 2008 French film but also recalls “The Fugitive” and “Taken.”
He doesn’t have the crazy gleam that an actor like Mel Gibson, love him or hate him, would bring to the proceedings, nor does he possess the deluded intensity of Liam Neeson in “Taken,’’ a silly movie that was a hit for that reason.
With a ticking-clock-time's-running-out conceit, "The Next Three Days" is like "The Fugitive" crossed with a McRib Sandwich - a death-defying chase with a limited-time-only offer.
Call it “The Fugitive” with more ambiguity but a lot less excitement.
The buzz: Writer-director Paul Haggis (“In the Valley of Elah,” “Crash”) is working from a 2008 French film but also recalls “The Fugitive” and “Taken.”
Like Stanwyck set up Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity.
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It's quite a suspenseful ride and Elizabeth Banks gives a passionately ambiguous performance - it's as if she's been directed like Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca," not knowing which way her character was going to go.
His work behind the camera – Crash, In the Valley of Elah and now this – proves time and again his eagerness to dole out ham-fisted significance with calculated tugs at the heartstrings.
Middlebrow sensibility and heavy-handed (if also honest) approach define the work of Paul Haggis as a writer-director (“Crash,” “In the Valley of Elah”), and if there’s a genre that he really is not adept at it is the thriller.
With “The Next Three Days,” writer/director Paul Haggis steps into the thriller genre after losing himself to matters of the heart with films such as “Crash” and “In the Valley of Elah.”
" Crash ," " In the Valley of Elah ," and even the script for " Million Dollar Baby " are all somewhat failed, in lesser or greater degrees, and watching Haggis simply work the pulses, guts and adrenal glands of the audience is decidedly more pleasant than having him clamber into our laps to appeal to our hearts, minds and souls.
Haggis (“Crash,” “In the Valley of Elah,”) has rewritten the screenplay of the 2008 French drama “Pour elle” by Fred Cavaye and Guillaume Lemans, which co-starred Vincent Lindon and Diane Kruger, recasting a mismatched Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in the leads.
He did it repeatedly in the Oscar-winning “Crash” and again in “In the Valley of Elah.”
Between an ultimately irrelevant nod to "Reservoir Dogs" and a completely tacked-on computer-generated highway sequence, one superfluous distraction piles on top of the next until Haitian earthquake references aren't the only thing suggesting "The Next Three Days" was made in like five minutes.
Stéphane Fontaine's cinematography has the raw, righteous funk of '70s ordinary-guy thrillers like " Three Days of the Condor " and " The Parallax View ," and Haggis (with one or two exceptions) keeps the film's modest ambitions within that narrow groove.
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The professor’s plan doesn’t feel like it’s falling apart at every turn so much as falling apart according to Haggis’ plan, making one pine for the comparatively sure-handed touch of Ransom-era Ron Howard.
Watching John’s dogged determination as he slowly amasses knowledge of dark criminal arts — including a fast seminar on prison breaks from a cameoing Liam Neeson — is reminiscent of another recent French movie, Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet.
Haggis has added nearly 40 minutes to the duration, and a different French cinematographer has been engaged (Stéphane Fontaine, who shot A Prophet and The Beat That My Heart Skipped).