Ticking Clock (2011)

I suppose one shouldn't expect much from a straight to DVD movie, which is fair - because one doesn't actually get much from this straight to DVD movie. It was shaping up as a pretty standard story of a serial killer case being looked into by an investigative reporter (Lewis Hicks, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) At some point, it becomes an open question whether there really is a serial killer, or whether the serial killer is a fiction of Hicks' imagination, and Hicks is really the serial killer. I was wondering - so score a handful of points for this. Then it morphs into a sci-fi movie that I really hadn't seen coming. Usually, when there's a plot twist I didn't expect I appreciate it, but this twist struck me as silly. I would have preferred they stick with the issue of whether or not Hicks was the killer. Adding a sci-fi theme just made this - I'll say it again ' silly.One piece of the story that made no sense to me. Posing as someone from a "big brother" type agency, Hicks is able to convince a social worker to let him leave an orphanage with a young boy? She didn't check him out? She didn't check out the agency he claimed to be working for? What kind of social worker is this? She just let the boy leave with this complete stranger because he claimed to be from a community group that tries to mentor troubled kids? Right. That's believable.5/10. Maybe 6 if they had simply stuck to the straight serial killer angle without the sci-fi silliness.

In this film, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays an investigative journalist so moronic he might be fired even by Fox News. Don't blame poor Cuba, though, who probably just needed the work. Blame writer John Turman, who did not think believability was required so long as the "suspense" was maintained.Crazy psycho serial killer "Keech" is played by Neal McDonough with all the woodenness, but none of the humor, of Arnold Schwartzenegger. When the plot veers out of basic suspense and into science fiction, one begins to wonder if some thoughtful serial killer might not wander out of the future and knock off John Turman before he writes this bomb.

What a load of crap, I had to turn this off about a half hour into it. The script was crap, the acting was crap. What a waste of film. This will be the last Cuba Gooding movie I watch. If this is the best he can do now he may as well get a job at Home Depot or Walmart. What a waste of a promising career, his projects have bee going from bad to worse and this by far is the worst I've seen. How does a person go from an Academy Award to this, is it bad management, poor project selection or no input or interest in his own career. Where is the Cuba Gooding that acted in A Murder of Crows, bring back the Cuba and maybe he'd get some better roles. What a shame.

Cuba Gooding Jr.'s previous movie, "Wrong Turn At Tahoe", was a surprisingly good movie, so my expectations were pretty high for "Ticking Clock". Sadly, Gooding takes a step back with this movie. I admit that I can't say that this is a BAD movie - while watching it, it kept me interested in seeing how it would be wrapped up - but it's not a successful movie. The movie doesn't look very good for one thing, sometimes looking somewhat cheap and photographed in a way that gives the movie a muddy look. Gooding's character comes across as a somewhat dumb and irresponsible character, and Gooding adds a touch of whine to a lot of the lines this character speaks. And the big twist in the movie will become pretty obvious to just about every viewer long before it dawns on Gooding's character. With this movie, it doesn't seem that any time soon that Gooding will work his way out of the straight-to-DVD sludge he's currently stuck in.