Movie Review: The Next Three Days

This PG-13 Crime/Romance/Drama concerns the Brennan family where the wife Lara, played by Elizabeth Banks, is accused of a murder and sent to jail for 20 years to life. Only her husband John, played well by Russell Crowe, believes her innocent of the crime. All their relatives and even their son Luke Brenna, played by Ty Simpkins, believes her guilty based on all the evidence.

After all the legal appeals are exhausted the wife attempts suicide and then confesses to her husband that she can’t bear the thought of remaining in jail for the remainder of her life. John, a literature teacher, decides the only way to save her is to break her out of prison and then escape to a country that won’t extradite them back to Pittsburgh. Naturally, this kind of illegal activity isn’t one of his, or any other English Literature teacher’s areas of expertise so he is soon involved in the underworld trying to get fake passports and another real Social Security Card that can be used to rent cars and buy airline tickets when paying by cash. He manages to get the heck beat out of him dealing with some of these underworld characters.

But he decides to get even with these underworld crooks by stealing their drug money. He knows that he will need a fortune in cash to make his escape plan work. That too is a near fiasco. Eventually, he manages to spring his wife from the country jail, but that’s only the beginning of the excitement. Their flight from the law, all of who are very talented police detectives makes for one exciting climax after another.

Basically the two unanswered questions of this crime movie are “Did the wife do the deed and actually murder her female supervisor?” The second question is whether this amateur jail breaker and his family will actually be able to elude the law and escape the country within the necessary three-day window of opportunity?

Crowe and Banks are backed up by an excellent supporting cast that includes Michael Buie as Mick Brennan, Moran Atlas as Erit, Remy Nozik as Jenna, Jason Beghe as Detective Quinn, Aisha Hinds as Detective Collero, Alissa Haggis as the junkie, Brian Dennehy as George Brennan and Helen Carey as Grace Brennan. Liam Neeson plays the ex-con Damon Pennington who has successfully escaped prison seven different times and provides the Crowe character the basic information he needs to know in order to break his wife out of jail and then make a successful and permanent escape from the country. The entire supporting cast is excellent.

Paul Haggis does a good directing job and keeping the early part of the film from dragging too much. Once again, Russell Crowe delivers a performance that will not disappoint his fans. While this isn’t “The Gladiator” or “L.A. Confidential” it is on a caliber with some of his other roles. It’s also nice to see a movie set in Pittsburgh for a change.