15 Minutes

Director (The Death and Life of Bobby Z)
Cast
Year 2001
Genre Action

15 Minutes deals with a topic that has probably been spoken about over the past decade to death. In my limited knowledge, 15 Minutes could have been the first movie to deal with the topic. What is the extent to which the media can go to generate stories? What is acceptable and what is not? In the race for the highest TRP is it acceptable to take someone’s life?

Detective Eddie Flemming (Robert De Niro) is one of New York’s finest cops. Well at least he is the most popular if not the best there is. Why is that? He ensures that crime scenes are well covered by the news channels. So, the media gets there as quickly as he does. How cool is that? For the media that is. In return, he gets repeatedly featured in the important news segment and a show that is run by the famous Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammer).

As Eddie is going about his day to day attention grabbing activities, 2 Eastern Europeans have made their way into New York City to settle some old scores. A Russian by the name of Emil Slovak (Karel Roden) and a Czech guy called Oleg Razgul (Oleg Taktarov). They are bank robbers and have come to NYC to track down an old partner in crime. A bank robbery from back home which left Emil and Oleg serving hard time.

Oleg is also a movie buff and doesn’t take time to steal a camera from a store. And when they find out that there is no money left (how surprising), Emil decides to cut open his old friend and wife. And as if that was not enough, they torch the place down. But Daphne (Vera Farmiga) sees this from the apartment across. Of course Emil and Oleg cannot take any prisoners.

The amazing part about the story as it unfolds is the manner in which Oleg and Emil actually take advantage of the rot that has set in the system to sell the footage of the killings and some more that they get done along the way to Robert Hawkins’ channel for a mere $1 million. Awesome isn’t it? Harsh truth I guess.

15 Minutes is one of the better movies on the topic. It is of course helped with some strong performances led by the man who played The Raging Bull and ably supported by Edward Burns & Kelsey Grammer. Karel Roden makes your blood crawl & cringe. Oleg Taktarov is more amusing than fearsome – exactly like his character should be. There is also a fleeting glance of the amazingly talented Charlize Theron.

In all, 15 Minutes is a decent watch. The performances prop up the movie to a level that it would not have been able to reach otherwise. But there is something missing in John Herzfeld’s direction that I am unable to place a finger on. Therefore, I will go with a 6 on 10. Watchable on DVD.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCa4c8D5THc