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Running Out of Time (2/5) – Netflix Movie Review

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Aug 2, 2019 | 3 minutes

RUNNING OUT OF TIME is a new thriller on Netflix. The movie originally premiered on BET and has a 90s action vibe. If that’s not your thing, you might not enjoy it. However, if you watch it as a spoof, it can be fun. Read more in our full Running Out of Time review or watch it on Netflix now.

Running Out of Time is a new thriller on Netflix with a really cool leading lady. This is definitely the best thing about the movie that originally premiered on BET. 

However, I can’t say that I enjoyed it overall. It’s simply feels too stereotypical in a sense that reminds me of so many 90s action movies. The kind that has a plot you will guess way ahead of time. Well, except for those elements that are so far fetched that it’s meant to make you gasp with surprise. I didn’t gasp as much as I rolled my eyes.

Then again, there’s fun to be had watching this kind of movie on Netflix. Read more in the rest of our Running Out of Time review below.

Tasha Smith is the perfect badass diva

The one thing  Running Out of Time   really  does have going for itself is Tasha Smith ( Empire ). Much like Gina Gershon in Showgirls or Joan Collins in Dynasty , she seems to be the one actor who knows what kind of movie she’s in.

When the plot is like something out of a soap opera (or the earlier mentioned 90s action movies), then you need to adjust your acting accordingly. This is something Tasha Smith manages to get away with in a way that makes her performance very entertaining.

Also, you’ll get Telma Hopkins (the Netflix series Dead to Me ) portraying her mother, which is another cool detail.

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About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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Running Out Of Time

Brandon Anthony (Cop) Tyrone Evans Clark (Banquet Attendee) London Deverona (Banquet Attendee) Robert Dobson (Secret Service Agent) Sean Dominic (Clarence) Dustin Harnish (Agent Spears) Telma Hopkins (Dolly) Sydney Elise Johnson (Kristen) Joel Layogan (Car Jacking Victim) RonReaco Lee (Cain)

Chris Stokes

Newly widowed Brenda Harper and her family are taken hostage over something from her late husband's past.

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Running Out of Time 1 & 2 – film reviews

Jamie Havlin has his say on two slickly made cat-and-mouse thrillers by multi-award winning Hong Kong director Johnnie To.

Cheung Wah (Andy Lau) is incurably ill, and his doctor gives him four weeks to live. ‘But if you start bleeding internally, you may die anytime.’

He takes the news calmly, pulls out two big wads of rolled banknotes, hands them to the doctor and asks for ‘four weeks worth of painkillers.’

How does he intend to spend his time before it runs out? In a word – unconventionally. He’s intent on avenging his father’s death by stealing a massively expensive blue diamond from a Triad gang led by a ruthless crook known as Baldy, who ripped his father off. He also wants to play some games with Hong Kong’s police force, in particular Inspector Ho Sheung Sang (Lau Ching-wan). And by games I don’t mean games like tennis or darts. He wants to involve Ho in his elaborate and daring scheme.

We first meet Ho in his role as a negotiator who must persuade two masked gunmen to release a group of hostages during a bank raid. The incident ends with a clever twist and one that shows that Ho is an exceptionally gifted police officer – unlike his superior from the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, the spineless and bungling Inspector Wong (Hui Siu-Hung).

The next time Ho is sent on a mission to resolve a hostage crisis it is Cheung Wah that he must deal with, when he threatens to detonate a small bomb on top of a high-rise commercial building. Ho believes it’s a fake but Wong isn’t so sure. Again, there’s an unexpected twist with Cheung diving down a ventilator chute to escape.

It’s an intricately plotted film, but what makes it a triumph is the chemistry between the two leads. Often thought of as a bit of a lightweight actor at this point, due to his good looks and crazily successful Cantopop career, Andy Lau delivers a fine performance and deserved his first Best Actor gong for it at the 19th Hong Kong Film Awards. The always dependable Lau Ching-Wan is almost as good.

A mention should be made too of Yoyo Mung’s relatively brief turn as a girl who Cheung meets on a minibus. The attraction between the pair is particularly poignant given Cheung’s diagnosis, which obviously ruled him out of returning for the sequel.

Co-directed by Johnnie To and Law Wing-cheung, Running Out Of Time 2 sees Lau Ching-wan reprise his role as Ho, with Hui Siu-Hung’s Wong now an Assistant Commissioner – and noticeably more buffoonish than before.

Lam Suet, previously one of Baldy’s henchmen, also returns but in a different role: a stressed-out cop called Ken Chan, who has a gambling addiction and is in heavy debt to some loan sharks.

A dizzying early sequence where a young man (Ekin Cheng) plays heads and tails with Ken on the edge of the rooftop of a skyscraper certainly had my nerves jangling and raised my hopes that this could be as entertaining as the original but, sadly, this was not to be.

While it’s often shot imaginatively, though with some less than impressive CGI, the sequel sticks too closely to the formula of the original. This time around, Andy Lau’s Cheung is replaced by another supersmart, stylish and elusive criminal who wants to play games with Inspector Ho. Ekin Cheng’s unnamed character also resembles a David Copperfield style figure but, despite his skills in creating grand illusions and his near supernatural ability to disappear into thin air, the movie lacks the magic of its predecessor.

Both films are released on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from brand new 2K restorations and special features include a limited edition slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré (Gokaiju); an audio commentary on Running Out of Time by writers Laurent Cortiaud and Julien Carbon, moderated by Stefan Hammond; archival interviews; The Directors’ Overview of Carbon and Courtiaud – archival featurette; and Hong Kong Stories, a 52-minute documentary from 2003 by director Yves Montmayeur about Hong Kong cinema mythology and a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on both films.

For more on the release, click here .

All words by Jamie Havlin. Jamie has written a couple of short films screened on British TV and at international festivals, and he regularly contributes to the glam rock fanzine Wired Up! More writing by Jamie can be found at his Louder Than War author’s archive .

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Running Out of Time 01:02

• Blu-ray edition reviewed by Chris Galloway
• August 23 2022

See more details, packaging, or compare

Acclaimed director Johnnie To (The Heroic Trio, The Mission) is on top form with slam bang action-thriller Running Out of Time and its equally electrifying sequel.

Expert hostage negotiator Ho Sheung-sang (Lau Ching-wan, Black Mask, Mad Detective) is drawn into a psychological game of cat-and-mouse when a criminal mastermind with weeks to live (Andy Lau, Infernal Affairs, House of Flying Daggers) decides to take on the entire Hong Kong Police Force. There’s more to his plan than meets the eye, but can Inspector Ho figure it out and catch him in time? He’s got 72 hours to try.

A huge box office hit, Running Out of Time swept the 19th Hong Kong Film Awards and spawned a popular sequel in Running Out of Time 2, in which Lau Ching-wan returns as Inspector Ho - this time in pursuit of a sophisticated art thief with a taste for drama and theatrical flair.

Picture 8/10

Arrow Video presents Johnnie To’s Running Out of Time and Running Out of Time 2 (the latter co-directed by Law Wing-cheong) in a new 2-disc set with both presentations sourced from new 2K restorations. Each film is presented via a 1080p/24hz high-definition encode on its own individual dual-layer disc in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The restorations were performed by Fortune Star.

Both presentations end up looking good, it's just neither stand out in any special way. Both films have gone through thorough restorations, no severe blemish or fault to be seen, and detail levels are solid enough if not especially impressive. Some scenes lack the minutiae I would have expected in a newer restoration, and this can lead to a slight fuzziness in places. It appears some minor filtering has been applied to the image leading to grain that doesn’t look as sharp as it could, and even though that could play into that slight fuzziness that is present I suspect a most of it is more inherent to the original elements.

As to any filtering that may have been applied it doesn’t impact the final image in any severe way I'm thankful to say. As I mentioned grain is still present and there’s a film texture to be seen, it’s just not as strong or clean as I would have hoped with the texture varying from shot to shot; one shot will look grainy (if a little noisy) while the next might have a waxier texture. Colours and black levels are mostly solid but on occasion, usually in dimly lit shots, the black levels can flatten and turn a bit of a murky blue crushing detail out. During its stronger moments shadows look rather good with distinguishable details, light even dispersing naturally into the dark background with no banding evident. This aspect may be a little stronger in the second film.

Minor hindrances aside the presentations for both films are pleasing, but that's about all that can really be said.

(This title was produced in collaboration with the UK label Eureka for their Masters of Cinema series, and it appears Eureka is using the exact same discs. When these discs are placed in a region A player Arrow’s branding and menus appear. When placed in a region B player the Masters of Cinema branding and menus appear.)

On top of separate Mandarin and Cantonese 5.1 surround DTS-HD MA soundtracks, each film also comes with an optional English soundtrack, the first film's track presented in lossless 1.0 PCM monaural, the second in 5.1 DTS-HD MA surround. I watched each film in Mandarin and then sampled the other tracks.

Despite recent restorations and presentations consistently proving to me otherwise (again and again and again) I still find myself anticipating the audio for 90’s/early 00’s Hong Kong films to sound flat and lifeless, all based on previous experiences with home video releases from many years (now decades) ago. I was clearly expecting the same here because I ended up being astounded at how good both the Mandarin and Cantonese soundtracks come out sounding, the Mandarin one winning with a slight edge. Spoken dialogue has a nice punch to it managing to sound fairly lifelike, not flat and tinny as I was anticipating, and the action scenes do push the volume levels without distorting. Even the Cantonese track, which I felt features the more obvious dubbing, comes off sounding the same.

The mix for both films isn’t anything I’d call special, both coming off about what I would expect for most action films: dialogue is focused to the fronts while ambient noise and action is mixed to the rears, along with the occasional voice, ringing phone, and whatever else seems appropriate. Music is of course also mixed to the rears. Yet even if I can’t say it offers up any surprises it still all sounds rather good, and movement and panning between speakers sounds natural.

The English tracks end up being a little weaker, the mono track for the first film being the weakest one of all of the audio presentations. To its credit music and action still offers notable range but voices come off a bit monotone in comparison to the other tracks. The 5.1 English surround track for the second film fares better but is still noticeably weaker compared to the other two tracks. Also, the music mix sounds a bit off, maybe cutting things off too early at times. Interestingly, while the second film features a good amount of English dialogue, present in both the Mandarin and Cantonese tracks, it appears that the English dialogue was also dubbed over for this track since the accents differ. I have to assume this is how it’s usually done (actor availability and such) but this is probably the first time I really noticed it.

I give the edge to the Mandarin soundtracks for both films, but no matter which track one goes with (even the mono English track on the first film) they shouldn’t find much of anything to be disappointed by.

Extras 8/10

Arrow (and Eureka, who is handling the region B release) have thrown in a decent amount of material, though most of it was created for previous editions and there can be a slight feel of repetiveness here. Arrow has, at the very least, commissioned a new audio commentary featuring Hong Kong film expert and programmer Frank Djeng for each film. Djeng provided a track for Arrow’s edition of One-Armed Boxer , a track that I enjoyed thanks to Djeng’s enthusiasm and energy, and I was looking forward to these.

His track for the second film is easily the better of the two, at least for me, since he takes it upon himself to offer a very heartfelt defense of it. THe sequel is usually compared unfavorably to the first film by that film’s many fans. When discussing the second film he defends the story, the change of focus to luck from the first film’s focus on time, and he even defends the film’s antagonist, who goes a very different direction compared to Andy Lau’s in the first film (Lau of course has his fans and he received accolades and awards for his role, so whoever played the “villain” in the follow-up had the cards stacked against them). Djeng also offers his admiration for how characters are altered between the two films and appreciates that To is clearly having his own fun with the second outing.

His defenses and insights into individual situations and the story are all good but Djeng can feel to be padding things out a bit more this time around, and I assume it’s because he had to stretch topics between both films. There are a lot of times where he’ll throw in some random trivia that I guess could seem interesting but doesn’t end up adding a lot to the conversation. For example, right off in his track for the second film he talks about the American Bald Eagle and its significance in the States and it what it symbolizes. This comes up because Bald Eagles (including badly CGI’d ones) do show up in the film, but he doesn’t make any direct correlation between the significance of the bird in the States and its appearance in the film. The subject is randomly thrown in there because the bird shows up and then we just move on to the next topic, which can include Djeng simply reacting to what’s onscreen at that moment. That’s not to say some of this trivia isn’t interesting because some of it proves fun. For example, during his track for the first film he brings up Vitasoy when it appears in the film, leading him to talk about a controversy that occurred around the brand in Hong Kong. Does it pertain to the film much? Not really but it ends up being a more interesting factoid than others.

Filler aside, the tracks are still worthwhile and are most involving when Djeng focuses on the both films' strengths and provides contextualization around their stories, characters, and why certain events play out the way they do. The ending for the first film is ambiguous, he explains, because of how Hong Kong audiences would react if the ending spelled out what happened to the film’s star, which in terms of the plot was inevitable anyways. I also enjoyed when he gets into how the film can be viewed following the Hong Kong handover, and how audiences would have come to the film then. He even brings up films that are clear influences, like Michael Mann’s Heat , and how elements of those films show up here. When he gets into a groove the tracks are both good, but I’d almost say a select-scene commentary for each film may have worked better.

From there on the supplements are geared more towards the first film and found on its respective disc. For the first film Arrow ports over the audio commentary created for Tai Seng’s DVD (as a sidenote, Djeng previously worked in marketing for that company) moderated by Stefan Hammond and featuring the film’s writers Laurent Courtiaud and Julien Carbon. Courtiaud and Carbon end up receiving most of the focus (though not all) within the remaining features in this set, and for my taste maybe too much since it is in this area where the features end up feeling a little repetitive. Having said that I was surprised by how much I ended up liking their commentary. The two share quite a bit around the film’s story and characters, influenced by films like Heat and even Wong Kar-wai, and they share anecdotes around its production and filming. It’s all quite good but the conversation picks up when the two talk about the film business in Hong Kong differs in comparison to other regions and also explain how the script morphed from its original draft. I wasn’t too surprised to learn that the original script was significantly darker, Lau’s character being more of a clear-cut villain in comparison to what he would be onscreen, but I liked that the two explain how and why this ended up changing (some of it has to do with translating between languages). This then leads to conversations around their experiences elsewhere in the Hong Kong film industry and what they learned about the expectations of Hong Kong audiences. It all proves to be incredibly fascinating and, thanks to Hammond’s moderating, moves at a good beat.

The commentary would have been good enough when it came to writing the film but (in what I assume is being done in the name of saving content for posterity) Arrow ports over features around the writing duo from prior DVD editions. This includes two archival interviews, one from 2003 and created for a French DVD edition (running around 22-minutes), and another in 2005 for a Tai Seng DVD edition (running around 37-minutes). Each interview has a different focus, the 2003 one focusing on the script and how it was altered, the other a general discussion around Hong Kong cinema. A lot of the material within these two programs does get covered in the commentary but the two do get a little more into how they first became exposed to films from Hong Kong and do bring up their favourite films and filmmakers.

The first disc then features an 8-minute featurette simply called Director’s Overview of Carbon and Courtiaud , which is also a featurette on the writers but instead offers interviews from third parties including Tsui Hark, Wong Kar-wai, Lau Ching-wan, Daniel Lee, and Michelle Yeoh. Still, this short feature ends up proving to be a little pointless because all of these interviews are in actuality excerpts from a longer documentary covering Carbon and Courtiard’s experiences in Hong Kong, , entitled Hong Kong Stories  and running 50-minutes. This feature is found on the second disc with the second film. This is then where things felt to get especially repetitive because we end up hearing some of the same stories from (and about) the writers that we’ve heard in some of the other features in the set, and that includes the exact same interviews from the 8-minute Director’s Overview . Hark’s comments prove meaningful since he explains why, despite the cultural differences, the two writers end up being a perfect fit in the industry (a love of comic books helps), and I also like when Couritaud and Carbon explain how real-life events, especially related to crime, end up influencing the films coming out of the region. Outside of that I felt like I had been down this road already a few times.

Thankfully there is other archival material that features other members of the cast and crew of the first film, all made for previous DVD editions. A 12-minute interview from 2003 with director Johnnie To overseen by Courtiaud and Carbon starts these off. It’s disappointingly brief but he summarizes the state of the Hong Kong film industry at the time, which was suffering from a downturn in the economy, and how that effected getting the first film made. This is then followed by a lengthier 25-minute interview—also from 2003—with the star of both films, Lau Ching-wan . There is a focus on these two films (and to my surprise Lau seems to like the second one a little more) but the conversation goes into some of his other work with a mention that maybe one day he would like to direct. The discussion gets quite amusing, though, when he shares his very brutal and honest opinion on the state of the Hong Kong film industry, at least for that period time.

One of the better archival interviews to be found here is a 2003 one with composer Raymond Wong , conducted while the poor man is trying to eat lunch. He starts off the 27-minute segment talking about his background and how he accidentally fell into music (it sounds like he was initially working in the tech industry) before getting into some of his scores, including the ones for these films. The last portion of his interview then focuses on how scores are seen as not being particularly important to films there, so when it came time to do the score for Shaolin Soccer he had to fight with the editors and mixers to get his score to the level he intended. This ends up being a rather interesting insight into an area of Hong Kong cinema I see very little discussion about.

(As a note, a lot of these features were all made for DVD editions released outside of North America. Arrow makes a note that the videos were sent to them with burned-in subtitles. To make room for their new English subtitle translations they had to blur out the original subtitles, meaning the bottom portion of the screen ends up looking blurry. I didn’t find this to be a distraction at all and Arrow’s new subtitles manage to cover it all up anyways.)

The first film ends up receiving a lot of attention, most of the release’s features appearing on that film's disc, while the second film manages to get the shaft. Outside of the Hong Kong Stories documentary (and the Djeng commentary) the only other significant feature on the second film’s disc, and the only significant feature on the release directly related to the film, is a 6-minute making-of featuring interviews with stars Lau Ching-wan and Ekin Cheng. It’s more promotional in nature, the two talking about their characters and story, and that’s about it. Each disc then features the trailer for their respective films, alongside small galleries presenting posters, lobby cards, and production photos. Closing the set off is a booklet featuring an essay on the two films by David West.

On the whole the content Arrow packs on here is generally fine with a lot of wonderful information around the film and the industry in Hong Kong at the time, there may just be too much focus on the writing duo behind the film.

The features could be a bit more diverse but Arrow has still assembled a lovely little package for Johnnie To’s two thrillers.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, out of time.

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Denzel Washington , who played a hateful bad guy in " Training Day ," is a more sympathetic slickster in "Out of Time," where he cheats on his wife and steals money, but has his reasons: His wife has already left him and is filing for divorce, he's cheating with his first love from high school, she's married to a wife-beater, and he steals the money to help her afford cancer therapy. So we sympathize with him as he digs himself into a hole. Any reasonable observer would consider him guilty of murder, theft and arson -- and one such observer is his estranged wife, who is also the detective assigned to the case.

Washington plays Matt Lee Whitlock, the sheriff of Banyon Key, Fla., a sleepy backwater where nothing much goes wrong. He is still on good terms with Detective Alexandra Cole ( Eva Mendes ), but their marriage has wound down and they're preparing for a split. That gives him time for a torrid affair with Ann Harrison ( Sanaa Lathan ), whose husband Chris ( Dean Cain ) is a violent and jealous man. Matt narrowly avoids being caught by the husband, and that's the first of many narrow escapes in a plot that cheerfully piles on the contrivances.

Ann reveals to Matt that she's dying from lung and liver cancer. Chris has purchased a $1 million life insurance policy; she changes the beneficiary to Matt, who steals $500,000 in impounded drug loot from his office safe, so that she can go to Europe for alternative therapy. The theory is that he can replace the money with the insurance payout, but alas Ann and Chris both die in a suspicious fire, and the feds suddenly decide they need the drug money immediately. Matt seems guilty any way you look at it -- his name on the insurance policy even provides a motive -- and to make things worse, a neighbor saw him lurking around the house shortly before it burned down.

There are more details, many more, which I will suppress because they provide the central entertainments of the movie (what I've described is the setup, before Matt's troubles really get sticky). The movie is in the spirit of those overplotted 1940s crime movies where the hero's dilemma is so baffling that it seems impossible for him to escape; the screenplay by David Collard is inspired in part by "The Big Clock" (1948). All circumstantial evidence points to Matt; Hitchcock described this dilemma as "the innocent man wrongly accused," but the catch is, Matt isn't entirely innocent. He did steal the money, for starters.

Director Carl Franklin (" One False Move "), who also worked with Washington on "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1995), is frankly trying to manipulate the audience beyond the edge of plausibility. The early scenes seem to follow more or less possibly, but by the time Matt is hanging from a hotel balcony, or concealing incriminating telephone records, we care more about the plot than the characters; suspension of disbelief, always necessary in a thriller, is required here in wholesale quantities. But in a movie like "Out of Time" I'm not looking for realism, I'm looking for a sense of style brought to genre material.

Washington is one of the most likable of actors, which is essential to this character, preventing us from concluding that he's getting what he deserves. Mendes makes the ex-wife Alex into a curiously forgiving character, who feels little rancor for the straying Matt and apparently still likes him; maybe there would have been more suspense if she were furious with him. Saana Latham has a tricky role as Ann -- trickier the deeper we go into the plot -- and is plausible at many different speeds, and Dean Cain is convincingly vile as the violent husband. John Billingsley is Chae, the local medical examiner who is Matt's sidekick and supplies low-key, goofy support in some tight situations.

Another one of the movie's stars is its Florida location. It was photographed in and around Miami, Boca Grande and Cortez, and reminds us how many Hollywood crime movies depend on the familiar streets of Los Angeles (or Toronto). Banyon Key seems like a real place, sleepy and laid-back, where everybody knows one another and high school romances could still smolder. As the net of evidence tightens around the sheriff, it seems more threatening because there are few places for him to hide, and few players who don't know him.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Out of Time (2003)

Rated PG-13 For Sexual Content, Violence and Some Language

114 minutes

Denzel Washington as Matt

Sanaa Lathan as Ann

Dean Cain as Chris

Eva Mendes as Det. Alexandra Cole

John Billingsley as Chae

Alex Carter as Dr. Cabbot

Robert Baker as Tony Dalten

Directed by

• Carl Franklin
• David Collard

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RUNNING OUT OF TIME

• Post author: eenableadmin
• Post published: August 5, 2019
• Post category: Uncategorized

RUNNING OUT OF TIME (Días contados)

(director/writer: Imanol Uribe; screenwriter: Juan Madrid (novel); cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe; editor: Teresa Font; cast: Carmelo Gómez (Antonio), Ruth Gabriel (Charo), Javier Bardem (Lisardo), Karra Elejalde (Rafa), Candela Peña (Vanessa), Elvira Mínguez (Lourdes), Pepón Nieto (Ugarte), Joseba Apaolaza (Carlos), Pedro Casablanc (Alfredo), Chacho Carreras (Portugues), Raquel Sanchís (Rosa); Runtime: 93; Tanelorn Films/Ariane Films; 1994-Spain)

“The problem with this slickly done film, is that everything is only surface deep.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

“Running Out of Time” is loosely based on the opera Carmen; it’s a star-crossed love story between a Basque terrorist and a junkie whore. The terrorist is a member of ETA, whose mission is to carry out a series of car bombs in the Madrid area–including the police station. The film’s protagonist is Antonio (Gómez), a sullen young man who never smoked dope and seems to have no life in him except he has some kind of duty to this mission. He sneaks past the check-point guards to get into Madrid by hooking up with a whore, and goes to his rented apartment where he poses as a free-lance photographer. He meets his next-door apartment dweller Charo (Gabriel) when she’s locked out and she asks him to break into her place, explaining that her husband Alfredo knows how to but he’s serving time in prison.

When Antonio can’t open her door she goes to his place to take a leak and shoots heroin in his bathroom, and takes a bath; when she discovers he’s a photographer, she asks him to take nude photos of her in the bath. There will be lots of titty shots and shots from her waist down. Soon her roommate Vanessa returns with the key; and, Antonio, even though he knows he shouldn’t, gets involved with Charo. He meets her untrustworthy pimp, Lisardo (Bardem), and the local drug pusher, Portugues. The girls get money for whoring, and are living a hopeless existence. Charo, even though she’s a whore, only lets men look at her while dancing in the nude.Vanessa gives them blow jobs. Charo tells Antonio she won’t screw anyone else but her husband Alfredo, because he knows how to make love to her. This will not stop Antonio from trying until he succeeds.

When Inspector Rafa and his police team break into Charo’s place and insult the girls, they also hassle Antonio. But he’s much smoother than the bimbo girls and shows them his phony ID card while smooth talking them. When they leave, he warns Charo to watch out because one of her people is an informer. He says the cops know all about her next cocaine deal and party.

Meanwhile Antonio’s relationship with his other terrorist partner Lourdes (Mínguez ), grows chilly.

The problem with this slickly done film, is that everything is only surface deep. We never read the terrorist’s mind or get to know much about Antonio or why he does what he does. This is strictly an in-your-face film experience, as the director Uribe keeps it at a sensual level and never probes for a possibly deeper story. What this does, is make it a film that was diverting because of the nuanced performances by Gómez and Gabriel. But it doesn’t add anything to knowing the terrorists, or exploring the underground of pimps, drug dealers, whores, and cops who stretch the rules in dealing with these low-lifes. A forgettable film but, nevertheless, an enjoyable one.

REVIEWED ON 7/25/2001 GRADE: B –

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Out of time, common sense media reviewers.

Best for older teens and their parents.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Honesty is the central theme of this film.

A strong, racially diverse cast features powerful

Tense peril and gunplay, characters killed, brief

The movie includes some steamy sexual situations t

Some strong language.

Drinking and smoking, character drinks too much.

Parents need to know that this movie includes some steamy sexual situations that are right up at the limit of the PG-13 rating. Characters use some strong language. Characters drink and smoke, one to excess. Violence includes gunplay, death from a fall, and a brief shot of charred dead bodies. Inter-racial…

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

A strong, racially diverse cast features powerful and determined individuals.

Violence & Scariness

Tense peril and gunplay, characters killed, brief graphic shot of charred bodies. Intense peril.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The movie includes some steamy sexual situations that are right up at the limit of the PG-13 rating; adultery.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this movie includes some steamy sexual situations that are right up at the limit of the PG-13 rating. Characters use some strong language. Characters drink and smoke, one to excess. Violence includes gunplay, death from a fall, and a brief shot of charred dead bodies. Inter-racial relationships and marriages are refreshingly portrayed as commonplace, one of the movie's strengths. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (3)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Danger: Disturbing Graphic Sex Scene( Pass on this Movie )

Film noir throwback, what's the story.

With its very tangled web of betrayal, greed, and murder, OUT OF TIME recalls those classic old-fashioned noir films. Everything about Chief of Police Matthias Whitlock (Denzel Washington), from the crisply pressed white shirt and dark shorts of his uniform to the way he walks down the street checking to see whether all the doors are locked, tells us that he is extremely careful, meticulously honest, and highly professional. But then he answers a call from Ann Harrison (Sanaa Lathan) about a prowler, and things are different when it comes to her. They are having an affair that no one else knows about, especially Ann's abusive husband (Dean Cain) and Matt's estranged wife Alex (Eva Mendes). Matt tells Ann a small lie about Alex. And then, when Ann is diagnosed with cancer and needs an experimental treatment, borrowing that money from the evidence safe begins to seem like a possibility. The sharp uniform and close shave are gone. Matt wears a loose Hawaiian shirt and looks increasingly unraveled.

Is It Any Good?

Like Body Heat , Out of Time is a throwback to the noir classics, in which an ordinary man is drawn into disaster. Matt (and the audience) may think at first that he has done the wrong thing for the right reasons, but then things spiral out of control and into disaster. The plot holes are outweighed by the specifics of the story and the people who tell it. The movie makes nice sly use of the cliche that white people think that all black people look alike. Having Alex as the homicide detective assigned to the case is a fine twist, and affects her in personal and professional ways.

Most important, there is Washington himself, one of the all-time most mesmerizing and appealing screen stars. This role takes full advantage of all of Washington's greatest strengths, especially his ability to get and keep us on his side and his brilliance in conveying a secretive character. Lathan and Mendes are both exceptionally fine, and Cain is nicely creepy and menacing. The real find here, though, is John Billingsly as Matt's colleague Shay, whose gives his line readings a deliciously offbeat spin, making him far more than the standard wisecracking sidekick.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about where Matt's turning point was and whether he would have been more likely to tell the truth if not for his complicated relationship with Alex.

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 2, 2003
• On DVD or streaming : January 6, 2004
• Cast : Denzel Washington , Eva Mendes , Sanaa Lathan
• Director : Carl Franklin
• Inclusion Information : Black directors, Black actors, Female actors, Latino actors
• Studio : MGM/UA
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 105 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sexual content, violence and some language
• Last updated : October 30, 2023

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‘Back to Black’ Review: Marisa Abela Nails Amy Winehouse in Every Look, Mood and Note in a Biopic at Once Forthright and Forbidding

Sam Taylor-Johnson's jazz-meets-rock-star drama exerts an authentic fascination, even as its dysfunctional-addict love story keeps us at a distance.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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• ‘Back to Black’ Review: Marisa Abela Nails Amy Winehouse in Every Look, Mood and Note in a Biopic at Once Forthright and Forbidding 5 days ago

“ Back to Black ,” the 2006 album that the new Amy Winehouse biopic takes its title from, is a record built on an exquisite contradiction. The music has a crispy delicious retro-bop bounce, a quality that extends to Winehouse’s voice, which takes the growling-cat stylings of jazz legends like Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and kicks them up into something playfully ferocious. Yet when you tune into the lyrics, they’re as dark as midnight. “Rehab,” the album’s showpiece track, must surely be the jauntiest song ever recorded about an addict who turns the refusal to help herself into a stance of rock ‘n’ roll defiance.

Popular on Variety

But the edge is there too. In an episode that provokes a chuckle, but also suggests the lack of boundaries that fuels her art, Amy attracts the interest of Nick Shymansky (Sam Buchanan), a potential manager, when she performs “Stronger Than Me,” a song that basically disses her boyfriend as an emasculated wimp (in the initial meeting with Nick, the boyfriend learns that he’s the dupe of the song and stalks out). Amy, at one point, says that she’s not a feminist because she likes boys too much. But the truth is she’s the incarnation of a new brand of womanly assertion, like Courtney Love reborn as a proudly dissolute jazz diva who has come through the looking glass of hip-hop. The measure of her feminism is that she does whatever she wants; she’s drawn to extremes of hedonistic self-expression, whether it’s how much she drinks, the tattoos she gets on a whim (far more of a novelty and a statement 20 years ago), or the fearless emulation of her jazz heroines. “I’m no fuckin’ Spice Girl,” she tells Nick. That would seem obvious, though it’s a lesson she’s going to keep proving even if it kills her.

Amy records her first album, “Frank” (2003), as a knowingly out-of-time jazz record. She keeps saying that she doesn’t care about making money. The album is named after her idol, Frank Sinatra (though the film never clues us into that), which means that she wants to do it her way. But that’s easier said than done once you’ve climbed onto the record-industry ladder. She meets with the executives, who have a few ideas based on the fact that the album wasn’t very commercial. They’d rather not release it in the U.S. (they want to wait for her follow-up album). They think she should stop playing the guitar onstage. Amy’s reaction to all this is to tell them to fuck themselves, and to say: I need to live to write songs, so I’m going to take a major break before I make my next album.

What living turns out to be is falling for the man who’ll be the love of her life, because he’s as charged an addict as she is. The extended sequence in which Amy meets the sexy, indomitable Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell) at a pub is a bravura piece of mutual seduction in which the film’s director, Sam Taylor-Johnson , shows off her chops. Blake is not an emasculated wimp; his confidence is complete, his suavity bordering on the toxic. Jack O’Connell plays him as a kind of throwback — he’s like a late-’60s British matinee idol (think James Fox or the Michael Caine of “Alfie”) playing a jock with a lightning brain. He knows Amy’s record by heart; he also introduces her, on the jukebox, to the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack,” lip-syncing to it with gender-blending glee.

She spins the album “Back to Black” out of how shattered he left her. And it’s a sign of where the film’s priorities lie that we see her recording the irresistibly heartbreak-hooked title track, yet there’s little to no sense of how Winehouse’s masterful second and last album was created (the producer Mark Ronson gets a name-drop, the producer Salaam Remi gets an image drop, and that’s all). The album is a huge hit, making Amy a celebrity stalked by the paparazzi. And Blake takes the album’s message of melancholy as a signal that she’ll take him back. So he calls her, and they get married (basically a Vegas wedding in Miami Beach), and then they’re breaking up all over again.

“Sid and Nancy,” I’m afraid, this is not. We don’t swoon over the dysfunctional passion, the spectacle of two lovelorn addicts who are destined to bring out the worst in each other. Yet without that burning romantic core, “Back to Black” plays out what feels like an authentic but rather clinical version of amour fou.

What about the songs we love from “Back to Black”? Abela’s in-concert renditions of several Winehouse classics have a dilapidated splendor, and her performance of “Rehab” at the 2008 Grammy Awards is perfection, as is her version of “Tears Dry on Their Own” during the closing credits. Abela did all her own singing; she gets every soaring and scat-souled nuance. But while the songs keep popping up, they’re not in there in a way that feels, at each moment, like they’re expressing something so emotionally necessary that it becomes cathartic. Amy, contrary to her mythology, does end up in rehab. Near the end of her life, she gets clean, as Janis Joplin did. But that isn’t enough to keep her from becoming a member of the cautionary club of pop stars who died at 27 (Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain). Her self-destruction is on full display in “Back to Black.” Yet the film presents it, even revels in it, without giving you the sense that it fully understands it.

Reviewed at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Lower Manhattan, New York, April 8, 2024. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 122 MIN.

• Production: A Focus Features release of a Monumental Pictures production, in association with StudioCanal, with the participation of Canal + Cine + M6 and W9. Producers: Alison Owen, Debra Hayward, Nicky Kentish Barnes. Executive producers: Anna Marsh, Ron Halpern, Joe Naftalin, Sam Taylor-Johnson.
• Crew: Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson. Screenplay: Matt Greenhalgh. Camera: Polly Morgan. Editors: Martin Walsh, Laurence Johnson. Music: Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Amy Winehouse.
• With: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Cowan, Sam Buchanan, Lesley Manville.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Good Times’ On Netflix, A Profanity-Laden Update Of Norman Lear’s Classic 1970s Sitcom

Where to stream:.

• Good Times (2024)
• norman lear

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There was a lot of controversy about the animated update of Good Times when its trailer came out in March, and Netflix didn’t give critics any episodes to review, which is always a bad sign. The trailer promised that this new version, one of Norman Lear’s last projects before he died last December, would be edgier and raunchier than the 1974-79 original. But is it funny?

GOOD TIMES : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Reggie Evans (JB Smoove) is in the shower, singing the old Good Times theme. The song is a duet with a nearby cockroach.

The Gist: Reggie lives in the same apartment — 17 C — where his grandparents, James and Florida Evans, used to live. It doesn’t even look much different from when they lived there 50 years ago. His wife Beverly (Yvette Nicole Brown) is busily trying to make the place shine in order to win a projects-wide beautification contest. Oldest son Junior (Jay Pharoah) was tasked to paint the walls, but instead paints a mural of Black Jesus.

Youngest daughter Grey (Marsai Martin) is out protesting the danger of processed foods pose to the community on the South Side of Chicago. And the baby of the family, Dalvin (Gerald Anthony “Slink” Johnson), doesn’t even live there anymore, even though he’s literally a baby; Reggie kicked him out of the house for dealing drugs.

Beverly desperately wants to win the contest, and prove to Delphine (Tisha Campbell), the officious older lady who is the judge, that this generation of the Evans family aren’t a bunch of screw ups. But when Delphine tells her that “Drug Dealing Baby” is an automatic disqualification, she promises that a baptized Dalvin will be in the apartment when Delphine comes by at 6 PM.

She prays to Black Jesus (Godfrey) for Dalvin’s return, and she suddenly lactates, meaning he’s around. Why he’s there isn’t exactly a miracle; he’s running from a group of toddlers who want to take over his turf. She speeds him to her bestie, Lashes by Lisa (Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola), who runs all sorts of businesses out of her apartment, so she can get Dalvan a quickie baptism.

In the meantime, the heat was shut off, right in the middle of Reggie’s shower, and Beverly spent his “secret stash” of money to decorate for the contest. Reggie tries to earn the heat money in his cab, but his passengers routinely stiff him with $24 bills and sobriety chips. So he tries to earn the money the honorable way: By hustling people at the local pool hall. He’s on a roll but doesn’t realize that Junior, whom he brought with him, is a pool prodigy. All of that goes by the wayside, though, when Dalvan is kidnapped by the rival toddlers. Grey, who was with Dalvan when he was grabbed, was too weak from her latest hunger strike; it gets so bad, flies buzz around her head as if she was already rotting away.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ranada Shepard ( Diary Of A Future President ) is the creator and showrunner of this version of Good Times , but the late Norman Lear and Seth MacFarlane are listed as executive producers (Lear even voiced a small role before his death last December). In a lot of ways, this version of Good Times feels like a cross between Lear, Mike Evans and Eric Monte’s original 1974-79 sitcom and MacFarlane’s Family Guy .

Our Take: There was a lot of controversy about this animated Good Times update when the trailer came out last month, and Netflix didn’t give critics any episodes to review, which is always a bad sign. And, through the first two episodes, what people hated about the trailer was very evident.

The new Good Times is certainly absurd, and perpetuates a lot of negative stereotypes. It’s not afraid to push the envelope as far as language and nudity are concerned. And the character of Dalvan makes Family Guy ‘s Stewie look like a real baby in comparison. But the show’s biggest offense, at least during the two episodes we watched, is that it’s just not funny.

The mistake that Shepard and her writers make is something that the producers of animated comedies have been making for 35 years, since The Simpsons hit it big. They try to push buttons and make things edgy; they push for the absurd at every turn. But in the process, they forget to concentrate on who the characters are and create stories that speak to where those characters are now and where they are going.

There are some interesting characters in this version of Good Times , notably Grey and Junior. Yes, they insult each other like J.J. and Thelma did in the original series. But Grey is smart and ambitious with concurrent streaks of both empathy and deviousness. In fact, she’s not all that much different than Marsai’s blackish character Diane Johnson. In the second episode, we see that Junior, like J.J. before him, isn’t dumb but is actually a pretty brilliant artist, and his creativity rules his brain at all times.

In essence, the new Good Times suffers from the same problem the original one did, the problem that led both John Amos and Esther Rolle to quit the series (though Rolle was persuaded to come back): Too much emphasis on the silly and absurd and not enough emphasis on characters and stories. What are Black families like the Evanses facing in 2024 Chicago, and how can the strength of their family unit help them deal with those issues? There’s a way to do this that still has room for silliness. There’s even a way to do this that still leaves room for a drug-dealing baby (there’s less Dalvan in the second episode, which is a good sign, as he’s a character that’s best taken in small doses, no pun intended). We’re just not sure we’ll see any of that in this show’s first season.

Sex and Skin: We see a lot of naked Reggie in the first episode. In the second episode, Reggie and Beverly have a two-minute round of loving.

Parting Shot: Dalvan has decided to move in upstairs (we’ll let you see how that goes down). Reggie’s reaction is a reference to the original series, one of a number of callbacks in that first episode.

Sleeper Star: If you listen carefully, original cast members Jimmie Walker and Bern Nadette Stanis voice a couple of small roles in the first episode. Most Pilot-y Line: Is there anything in this episode that is more shocking than a drug-dealing baby? Probably not.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There is actual potential in the new animated version of Good Times , but Shepard and her writers are too busy pushing the envelope to take advantage of that potential.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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