Video Reviews

Running Time

D: Josh Becker (1997); with Bruce Campbell, Jeremy Roberts, Anita Barone, Stan Davis, Art LaFleur. The phrase "in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope" should be enough to have any self-respecting filmgoer fretting that Running Time must be a gimmicky, overwrought psychological thriller. Well, it's got a gimmick, sure enough -- the same single-camera shots/no visible edits experiment that Hitch tried on his tale of murderers Leopold and Loeb -- but director Becker has no artistic pretensions beyond that for this film. In fact, the combination of the one-camera technique and the fact that it's shot in black and white actually add up to a completely different reasoning: Both those things make a movie cheaper to produce! Running Time is a low-budgeter, make no mistake, but it's a joyful, fast-paced one. Campbell (the Evil Dead series, Xena: Warrior Princess) is a young fella just out of five years in prison, who promptly hops a ride directly to his next caper. All the clichés are here: As his old partner in crime turns out to be less dependable than Campbell remembers, things start to go wrong, people get killed, and the young felon falls for a hooker with a heart of gold. It's all great fun, though, and with its careening camera movements and spot-the-cut turns into dark alleys, this short (70 min.!) straight-to-video-and-it-took-three-years-to-even-get-that-far feature resembles nothing so much as a Playhouse 90 made for Showtime Networks. As far as "bungled heist" flicks go, in other words, it's about as good as good trash gets. To be great trash, however, it needs a twist ending, and unfortunately, one never arrives during the film's running time.