The Next Three Days (2010)

John Brennan: So, the life in times of Don Quixote, what is it about?
Female College Student: That someone's belief in virtue is more important than virtue itself?
John Brennan: Yes... that's in there. But what is it about? Could it be how rational thought destroys your soul? Could it be about the triumph of irrationality and the power that is in that? You know, we spend a lot of time trying to organize the world. We build clocks and calendars and we try to predict the weather. But what part of our life is truly under our control? What if we choose to exist purely in a reality of our own making? Does that render us insane? And if it does, isn't that better than a life of despair?

You know what's the most interesting part in the movie ? That all what's after the above, culminating with the final consisting of "The Next Three Days", hides under the impression given by that monologue exactly the opposite of it (if you have eyes to see, ears to hear, or to put all those together - enough in the head to get it). All the triumph of irrationality (no matter how "cool" it might sound) has an organized plan behind it. Which, again, no matter how "crazy" is, it's still a plan. And which in all it's craziness is sufficiently well conceived to keep the risks up to some limit. And if the "irrationality" pushes the own limit too far there still is a last "rational" part in it that takes care that at least for the others there still is a failsafe mechanism in place. That's why what's above is full with question marks :) Because the answer to every question is .. well, questionable, from the perspective of the effect for yourself ? or for the others around ?. At least up to the last "?" ;) where all the external dementia should better take care to ensure behind it a single answer for the two perspectives. Which is what in this movie's case ? Well, watch it and you'll find out :D

This id from beginning to the end the movie I'm writing about today. Or more exactly its allegoric interpretation regarding what goes through in front of our eyes for about two hours. I'm sorry I started like this (I have no idea how intelligible was it), and I really hope I didn't scare (for good) the few readers who are landing on this page from time to time. But (for some reasons) I just couldn't hold it :) Eventually, that's the essence (the deepest level, because you have also something above it), and it doesn't happen very often to have something like this on the screens these days (not at the intensity/level you get here), so I would have felt sorry not to point it out. The movie subject itself is quite simple - a literature professor has one day the police swarming inside his house, picking up his wife and placing her in jail for a murder she apparently committed one day before. Left alone, with a 6-7 years old son, the teacher tries every possibility to save his wife from conviction. But every evidence, from her presence at the murder scene, up to the finger prints and blood on her coat incriminates her. From this point onwards, after the last possibility for appeal is exhausted, the guy has only one solution left: illegally getting out of jail, or in other words to "escape her" without any notice :) So, he starts to plan something apparently unthinkable and prone to fail for his status of a normal nice literature teacher. That's the path taken by the movie up to the end where you have two possible outcomes : he succeeds or not ( and now I hope that the intro starts to get some sense :) ).

Like I was saying above, besides "the deepest layer" you also have more on the surface - the movie is after all a romance drama as genre, behind all the thriller, action, etc image. I generally avoid talking too much on this subject, but again, in this case I can't hold (how subjective it might be) not to qualify this movie as a "true" romance drama compared to the bunch of "fake" stuff that displays this as genre, but usually is from "barely touching" to "completely parallel" with the real deal. I don't know .. let's consider "the masterpiece" = "Titanic" which is something like "I met three days ago on a boat the woman who's the love of my life, and now I'm totally and completely sure that I'm ready to die for her, drowned, shot, beaten or all together". Come on ... It just doesn't work like this .. not without second thoughts, in 99.99% of the case. On the other hand, in "The Next Three Days" we have a guy who is married for quite a while, has a kid, and he seems to have reached a level of almost maximum interior peace & happiness with the two near him, from what we are shown in the first ten minutes of the movie. And this makes actually credible (well, I might be subjective, but ...) the attitude of "no matter the costs, jail is not the option for my wife". And this includes also the firm belief in the wife's innocence, which by the way, is the second thing (besides the "escape" result) that you'll get to know for sure only at the end of the movie (I won't say it :) ), although up to that point you might feel already all the time like the main character does.

For the movie making to point out would be the actors, the directing, the script and the music. For the actors, the main role is quite well played by Russell Crowe, and considering the incarcerated = Elizabeth Banks, I would be too subjective :) so I won't say more. What's more interesting is that you have a series of pretty known actors playing secondary parts, some very short = Liam Neeson, Brian Dennehy, Daniel Stern, Olivia Wilde. The directing goes hand-in-hand with the script = Paul Haggis (known for "Crash") and I can summarize the result for both in one word (maybe a bit more for the writing) : "brilliant". You have to options concerning this movie: either to be picky and search for plot holes, which you'll certainly find considering how non realistic is the theme (I observed one flaw just by chance .. so there are present there) .. or .. you can just go with the flow and appreciate what few movies having an action/thriller part try to do = to temperate a bit the "SF" piece transposed into reality by including points that break the smooth flow of events as it was expected to happen. In other words "the escape" isn't after all that easy to execute as a literature professor thought, starting actually with problems in the plan phase, not to talk about the execution. So .. finally, the music ... Danny Elfman is the main composer, and the soundtrack is superb. However, I left this for the end just to say that the movie brings up also some vocal tunes besides the instrumental sound. And considering that maybe the trailer is not conclusive/convincing enough (which is actually good, because you'll have a nice surprise watching the move), I said myself that it might be a good idea to supplement it with something you can hear at the end of the credits. I actually restrained myself to add also this to the "philosophical" piece in the intro to not exaggerate with the length ( which is already done by the way :) ). Nevertheless this has its own place well defined somewhere in the movie behind what you see in clear on screen : "Sometimes all it takes is a walk around the lake ..." ;) Enjoy !

Rating: 5 out of 5