5ive Days to Midnight (2004)

I'm not kidding, this really hooked me; one could almost say that this ought to come with a warning, letting people know that this may very well grip them and their attention, and not let go until the final credits roll. From the first moments, this is interesting and engaging. The concept is not completely original, of course, but this is a good take on it, and I found myself surprised by most of the twists. This follows a physics professor trying to uncover the truth behind a police file that details his own murder, with the date being five days later. The plot keeps you watching, and there are unexpected developments that make sense. There's only one brief instance of obvious exposition, and apart from that, the story-telling is rather well-done. The cinematography and editing are great, with the one exception of the occasional "sluggish" time effect, which isn't always used well. This builds atmosphere and suspense well, and can be intense. It's exciting when it tries to be. The script is well-crafted and clever. Humor tends to be appropriate in tone and amount, though one person is pushed a little excessively as comic relief. The characters are well-written and credible. Dialog can be smart. The music is cool and fitting. Production design is excellent throughout. Special effects tend to look marvelous. The acting is convincing, every single performance, including the kid. Throughout, this is fairly well-done. The climax is well-done. It does, unfortunately, not completely live up to the incredible things that the audience imagines during the course of the show, but it wraps stuff up well. The DVD comes with trailers for this and three other things, as well as four informative and well-done featurettes. While I can't speak for any other version, the one I watched did not have nudity or language, and was in five episodes of about forty minutes each, so three hours and twenty is the full running time. I recommend this mini-series to any fan of science fiction-thrillers that deal with the idea of time and how set in stone the future is. Huh. The Sci-Fi Channel doesn't always suck. Before The Lost Room and this, I wouldn't have believed that to be possible. 7/10

Sometimes not having the parameters of a Hollywood film can make Television the best outlet for a brilliant film. Sure it might not have the special effects, stunts, even big names but you can see some really unique talent, and a strong story that is enthralling. Five Days Till Midnight is an edge of your seat murder mystery that combines some truly great performances with a even better storyline. Clocking in at 3 1/2 hours (another thing a Hollywood film could never accomplish) you would never know it. The film is over in a blink and you want more because it was so good. It's non-stop and so incredibly written by Robert Zappia (Halloween H20), David Aaron Cohen (The Devil's Own), Anthony Peckham (Don't Say A Word), and Cindy Myers.Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton leads the cast as Professor JT Neumeyer. Devastated by the loss of his wife, and deeply protective and loving of his beautiful daughter Jesse, he seems to finally be putting the pieces of his life back together including a new woman in his life. Hutton is intense, emotional, strong, a great leading man for this role. He also portrays brilliance and devotion to his daughter and you really feel for his character. He absolutely should have at least gotten an Emmy nod out of this. Randy Quaid is equally as brilliant as tough as nails Homicide detective Irwin Sikorski. Quaid's character seems a little dark, sinister and yet dedicated to his job and the people he serves. This is one of Quaid's best roles and certainly one of his most dramatic. He plays the role to the fullest. Kari Matchett plays Hutton's new love interest with a mysterious past Claudia Whitney. TV Fans will recognize Matchett from the sadly canceled Invasion. Matchett and Hutton make a good couple and I don't think Matchett is quite likable enough for the role but she does alright. Hamish Linklater plays the slightly disturbed but incredibly brilliant Carl Axelrod. His unbalanced performance is small but effective and he's great at it. Angus Macfadyen is the brutal mobster Roy Bremmer. I think Bremmer's role could have been bigger but the scenes he was in were very effective. He comes across as adequately evil and is the perfect bad guy but also the perfect scape goat for the murder mystery at hand. And last but certainly not least is the incredible performance by young Gage Golightly as Hutton's daughter Jesse. First of all Golightly has a striking resemblance to a young Drew Barrymore and equally charismatic on screen. Her role as Jesse is NOT a typical "kid" role and instead she is utilized to the fullest in the role. She's smart, and important to the story and she does such an incredible job. This should have been her claim to fame and rocketed her into bigger and better things and I'm sure she'll surface again in the future.Veteran TV director Michael W. Watkins does an incredible job setting up suspense and clues and an intriguing time travel type storyline without complicating things. Some would say it's almost too simplistic. For instance why doesn't any of the evidence change as J.T. changes the time-line?? Still it doesn't matter because everything fits together so perfectly and it's simplicity makes it so watchable. The characters are all so real and you just get brought into this twisted world of this seemingly normal, rather boring professor's life. Even when the film is over you'll have questions in your mind, and plenty to discuss, it's the ultimate water cooler film. This is a real treat and a hidden gem for sure. I think it's one of my favorites. 9/10

Well done I had gone to the local video store to do a exchange because the night before we got Once upon a time in Mexico and trust me I don't return movies unless they really suck.Anyway I asked about 5 Days to midnight and the clerk said well it was not renting too good but what the heel I took it anyway and we were really surprised even though it was in 4 parts but at that my wife and I watched the first 2 and went to bed the first thing in the morning she says coffee is on I'm taking our daughter to school and you can walk the dog and then we can finish the movie.And I'm glad I took a chance I would have to say this film kept us thinking right up until the end,I hope Lions gate has more of that suspenseful talent lurking around at their studios in the future.Thanks for a great film.

Rating: ** out of ****The two-hour Sci-Fi Channel made-for-TV movies may almost always suck, but you can usually rely on their miniseries for quality acting, writing, and special effects (I loved Taken and Children of Dune, really liked Dune, and there is nothing currently on TV that can compete with the new Battlestar Galactica). Five Days to Midnight breaks the channel's success streak, proving to be easily its worst miniseries to date. 5DTM stars Timothy Hutton as J.T. Neumeyer, a physics professor with a young daughter (I forget the actress's name, but she looks a lot like a young Drew Barrymore) and a life insurance agent named Claudia for a girlfriend (Kari Matchett). While visiting his late wife's grave on a Monday morning, his daughter discovers a briefcase nearby. Upon opening the case, J.T. is a little shocked to discover that the contents are files pertaining to his own murder, which will occur in five days, at 3:55 A.M. on Friday.He initially laughs it off as a hoax, but when a few of the little "prophecies" come true, he becomes a fast believer and sets out to find out who would murder him and why. He has only a few clues, but there is a list of suspects: Carl Axelrod, an eccentric student of his; Brad, his financially desperate brother-in-law; Roy Bremmer, a man he's never even heard of; and even his own girlfriend Claudia, who is not all that she appears to be. With the clock ticking down and only the help of a homicide investigator (Randy Quaid), J.T.'s obsession with saving his own life may come at the cost of many others.Undeniably, 5DTM boasts one of the niftier premises in recent memory. Playing like a mix of Minority Report meets 24, the combination of sci-fi and mystery has always appealed to me, so there's no question that a good portion of the miniseries is genuinely engaging and entertaining (mostly in the beginning and middle segments). A lot of the series is intentionally predictable, and in a fun way, like you just know that gift from his girlfriend will be the same parka he wears in that photo from the briefcase where he's lying dead, or the car his girlfriend rented will be that green Cherokee in that other photo, and so on and so forth. 5DTM also has fun with the implications of possible time travel and the changes one could set forth in the fabric of time. I was also thankful for the fact that a lot of the characters actually caught on to the possibility of time travel quickly and even accepted it without much question.There are a lot of decent to good performances, especially Timothy Hutton, who capably handles the functions of a likable everyman. The girl who plays his daughter is terrific as well, and Kari Matchett would be a dead-on match for Naomi Watts if she had a smaller nose and slightly larger cheeks. Angus Macfadyen makes for a menacing villain as Bremmer, who's so evil he clearly can't be Neumeyer's killer.Unfortunately, the miniseries begins to stumble by the second half of 'Day 4,' and is just a complete and utter mess by 'Day 5.' The writers can't seem to be able to keep much consistency in the film's concept of time travel. Without giving much away, when certain changes are made to the timeline in the film's climax, newspaper articles and photos from the future are also altered to fit the new timeline (kind of like in Back to the Future), and the changes occur immediately. However, in 'Day 2,' Neumeyer changes a woman's fate, preventing her from getting killed by a collapsing tree. After this change in time, his daughter then reads all the newspaper articles from the file the next day, which still state that the woman died because of the tree. Wouldn't that portion of the article have been altered?The climax is just terrible (moderate spoilers in this paragraph), with every major suspect conveniently converging in the same location with murder on their minds. Just as bad, at least three of the potential killers wouldn't have even targeted Neumeyer if not for the intervention of the briefcase itself, and the one suspect that continuously threatens his life also seems most likely to the deed, but a tacked-on, idiotic surprise revelation completely disregards that possibility, placing the blame firmly on one of the characters that wouldn't have killed him if not for the briefcase's intervention. I can't think of any plausible reason this person would have killed Neumeyer prior to the appearance of the briefcase, but a bullet that conveniently fits into a gun is supposed to lead us to believe it was this one character all along.The identity of the killer is perfectly predictable, since it's always the person we're least likely meant to suspect. Even though I came to the realization very early, I still doubted myself because, as stated earlier, there's just no reason this person would have any true motivation to kill Neumeyer without the briefcase.It's unfortunate, but with such an awful ending, I just can't go out of my way to recommend 5DTM. It's not the movie's only major flaw, the miniseries is constantly padded to fill its allotted running time, and the director goes insanely overboard on the choppy slow motion, often ruining any developing suspense or momentum. Had the miniseries been about forty-five minutes to an hour shorter, I might have said yes as a video rental, but unless if you've got lots of time to kill, this isn't rewarding enough to spend the time and money.