Varietal: Chardonnay
Vintner: Josh Becker
Vintage: 1998
Vineyard: Anchor Bay

by Brian.


I'll freely admit that Running Time was an impulse purchase, fueled by vague flashes of reading about a Bruce Campbell Indy filmed in real-time a la Hitchcock's Rope. After Initial excitement of finding the long-lost memory and indelible optimism (cool! Even the disc is made to look like a clock!) I must say the film falls flat fairly quickly. "Written, produced, and directed by Josh Becker, this fast-paced, action film starring Bruce Campbell is shot in real time and entirely on location on the streets of LA," winding from location to location either by whip pan as an on-the-run Campbell turns suddenly or by an actor getting a little too close to the camera. The back of the case paints the idea in its most appealing light, but those that have undergone Rope already know this film's weaknesses.

Unlike Rope, Becker takes his heist flick outside, giving the film a feel closer to an episode of COPS than the stage play Hitch was most candidly a part of. In fact, the first ten minutes of Running Time are actually enjoyable, (of course being an undying Bruce Campbell fan helps) floating into Carl's world of newfound freedom (after a somewhat flat scene with a prison warden kiss-off before being released) and a ballsy heist planned not even ten minutes outside the gates. After the heist inevitably goes awry and the whore is faux-remarkably rediscovered as a romantic interest, the film starts slides toward boredom with increasing speed. As the obnoxious and unlikable partner-in-crime grows more and more predictably savage, We start flicking at watches, checking the 'time left' button on the player, and planning our evening. By the time a suspenseful three minutes are spent with the hooker/high school sweetheart, we're actually rooting for him to leave her, if we're still in front of the screen at all.

Running Time, like Rope before it, proves to be a much better idea than film. Yeah! Realism! Real-time! Reality! What the pitch does not include are all the boring parts that that continuous time forces us to see. Shot after shot of Campbell running from behind, Jeremy Robert's horribly flat character with no time to characterize himself as anything more than "the partner turned bad", and the ultimate climax of the film guessed ten minutes before we should are the byproduct of such an "exciting" principle.

Although the film is only 70 minutes long, I haven't brought myself to listen to the josh Becker/Bruce Campbell commentary track. Perhaps someday I will, since Bruce Campbell always proves to be entertaining (check out tracks on the Evil Dead discs for proof), but my interests have yet to run that dry.

This film, if it has to be a wine, is a really bad California Chardonnay. Despite the pretty picture on the bottle, the taste of oak and acid overshadow any quality in the glass. It looks good on the shelf, but ultimately it's not worth drinking. I still wait for Bruce Campbell's break out role to raise him above cult hero status, but perhaps I'll be waiting for a while.


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