OVER THE LAST half-decade, filmmaker Paul Haggis’ name has become synonymous with socially and politically themed films, from Million Dollar Baby to Crash and In the Valley of Elah. Haggis’ latest, The Next Three Days, leaves the messaging aside for a prison-escape thriller that’s every bit as entertaining as it is shallow.
A remake of Fred Cavayé’s 2008 French thriller Pour Elle, the film centers on John Brennan (Russell Crowe), a college professor. He’s happily married to Lara (Elizabeth Banks). Brennan’s seemingly idyllic existence gets turned upside down when Lara is arrested for the murder of her boss. Circumstantial evidence, including a bloodstain on her overcoat, strongly suggests Lara’s guilt. She unpersuasively claims that a young woman, possibly a drug addict, brushed her overcoat as she was entering the parking lot. Lara is tried, convicted for murder and sentenced to 20 years to life.
After three years and unsuccessful appeals, Lara’s future looks bleak, but Brennan, unwaveringly convinced of her innocence, decides there’s only one alternative left: breaking Lara out of prison and beginning a new life in a foreign country under assumed identities. Brennan turns to Damon (Liam Neeson), a repeat felon who broke out of several prisons. Damon crisply lays out everything Brennan has to do, a plan that gets accelerated when Brennan learns that Lara’s being transferred to a distant maximum-security prison.
Divided into three acts, the first act looks at Lara’s arrest, conviction and incarceration. There’s only perfunctory focus on the matter of Lara’s guilt. The second act concentrates on Brennan’s prep for Lara’s escape, including several encounters with career criminals, romantic temptation in the form of a single mom, Nicole (Olivia Wilde), cops increasingly suspicious of Brennan’s behavior and the already mentioned accelerated plan to free Lara. Not surprisingly, the third act focuses on Brennan putting his semi-improvised plan into action, with complications and a prolonged chase scene that proves, assuming it needed to be proved, that Haggis can direct tense, suspenseful action scenes.
Despite the sermon-ready subject matter, The Next Three Days doesn’t feel like a movie-with-a-message. That might be due to its origin as a French film and not a Haggis original. Unfortunately, Haggis chooses clarity over ambiguity, a closed ending instead of an open ending for the audience. He leaves Brennan still convinced of his wife’s innocence but minus the evidence necessary to prove it but gives the audience a definitive answer (which I won’t spoil). This allows Haggis to make an obvious, unsubtle point about the criminal justice system’s shortcomings (one few people would find controversial).
PG-13
