The Next Three Days asks (and answers) how far a man will go to save the things he loves. The film stars Russell Crowe as a husband and father, who as a last resort, decides to break his wife out of prison.
The tagline states "What if you had 72 hours to save everything you lived for?" but the film does not cover a span of 72 hours it covers three years in the life of this couple. The movie opens with Russell Crowe driving a car, his face splattered with blood and he appears to be in a state of high anxiety. We hear, but don't see someone breathing who seems to be in serious medical distress. The sound of the breathing becomes shallow and then stops. Then a title card comes on and we flash back three years and see the story unfold.
John and Lara Brennan (Elizabeth Banks) are a happily married couple with an orderly life that all comes crashing down when Lara is arrested for murder. The films jumps forward in time and Lara is incarcerated for murder while the appeal process works it's way through the court. Their son Luke has grown considerably so it is obvious a couple of years have passed. We learn the appeal process has failed and Lara and John's lawyer tries to get John to consider the evidence objectively. In a flashback we see Lara commit the murder, but John is not convinced of what the evidence is telling him and believes in his wife's innocence. He begins to realize the only way he can be with her is to break her out of jail.
After seventy minutes the movie catches up with the opening seen and we learn who is dying in the back of the car and why. Then the movie moves forward in time. Lara gets notified she will be transferred to a state prison within the next three days (hence the title). John realizes that if he is to proceed with his plans he only has 72 hours to make it work.
The pace of the movie in the last thirty minutes picks up dramatically as John executes his plan and the three of them make a run for freedom. But the excitement of the final scenes can't make up for the languid pace of the ninety five minutes that came before.
As a procedural the film works. It is interesting to watch the planning process. There are some good turns by actors Liam Neeson and Brian Dennehey in supporting roles and Russell Crowe is excellent as an ordinary man driven to do extraordinary things. But the overall premise of the film is to preposterous for the good acting to support. Crowe plays a middle aged junior college English teacher who, with the help of some books and the Internet, becomes a man of action who buys illegal guns, passports and plans an elaborate prison break that eludes prison guards, the Pittsburgh police, Pennsylvania State Police and Homeland security. How is this possible? Where did these latent skills come from? Because he is Russell Crowe he does these things and the film just asks the audience to believe it is possible. The film really stretches credulity to far when it the English teacher engages in a gunfight against a meth dealer in order to obtain cash for his plans.
The movie ends with a final flash back that really feels like a cheat. Up until the last ten minutes we only have the husband's belief that his wife is innocent. The crime we observed in a black & white flashback showed her actually committing the crime she was jailed for. The film would have been much more interesting if it left her guilt or innocence ambiguous. Was she guilty? Was his wife in reality a murderer? And did that not matter to him when he breaks her out of prison? Instead the film has a detective return to the scene of the original crime and, this time in color flashback, he visualizes the murder the way it really occurred letting the audience know that John was morally justified in the actions he took to save his family.
The Next Three Days is an fair movie (with a bad title) that is based on a French film called Pour Elle (Anything For Her). It has some strong acting and an electrifying final 30 minutes so I recommend it with reservations.
At The Movie House rating **1/2 stars
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