The Next Three Days (2010–122 mins) R. Crowe, El. Banks

During the year I always go to outlets such as IMDB roughly every other week and watch a ton of trailers. I LOVE trailers. So naturally even lesser movies that come out I have at least heard of and have seen the trailer of them. It’s pretty common then, for me to have preconceived notions about both the content and if I think a movie will be good. I would say of these two things I am generally more then 50/50 as to how it will play out or if it will be good. Sometimes I get both right sometimes both wrong, but hey it always evens out in the end. Here, I would have to say, I was fairly close as to knowing it would be pretty good but I was pleasantly surprised to how it got to where it was going. More on that after the plot.

In short, Crowe plays a man who’s wife is arrested abruptly, charged, and found guilty of murdering her boss. I won’t go into the details of those facts b/c the movie does a great job of not hanging up too much on them, just letting us see her get arrested and bam then her appeals seem to be exhausted. So we then get to the crux of the movie. When Crowe figures out that he is losing both his wife for life, and her will to live and love, he decides he has to get desperate. He approaches a man who successfully escaped prison and then begins to formulate a plan. I won’t go too much into it past that point as to not give much away. Initially while I was watching I was going back to my first assumption/notion that I had going into the movie. That it’s going to be a shortish straight forward get a plan and execute it. While it has these elements I was thinking it’s taking an awfully long time for him to get to that point. But there in lies the heart of the movie. It’s not just a smash and grab movie, while it might have some of those parts. It really gets into the heads of both the couple and their family so some end. We see the scattering of the mind and the emotion of Crowe’s character. The ups the downs and the not knowing what life will hand him. It’s here that we are seeing during what normally would be considered a drawn out beginning. So what we end up with is almost 2 movies. One, is an emotional ride and getting into his mind, then the 2nd being the breakout itself. A good job by Crowe to guide us in this movie and really get us on his side. Banks is ok if a bit lethargic throughout, taking a good acting idea for the character and doing it a bit too much in my mind.

Verdict—> This is a good intense movie that keeps you either on the edge of your seat, or sitting there “on edge”. It draws your emotions in as well as keeps your suspense hairs tingling. Just be sure to suspend disbelief about the whole breaking out of jail thing. A good recommendation by me, so grab it for a good watch, or pair it with a good comedy for a nice double feature.

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