When John Brennan’s wife is convicted of murder in The Next Three Days, he becomes obsessed with getting her out. Those efforts begin within the legal system, but soon, when realistic possibilities for acquittal run out, Brennan (Russell Crowe) starts considering extreme options, namely to break his wife out of federal prison in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There are two ways to view The Next Three Days. If you see the film as a high-intensity prison break movie with a heart, then you will appreciate the relationship complexities director Paul Haggis manages to weave into the drama, while regretting the movie’s dawdling moments, which suck the pace from its action. If you see The Next Three Days as a smart drama about marriage, fidelity, and personal determination with some exciting action thrown in, then its characters feel thin and its premise unbelievable, with the action not quite making up for story shortfalls.
Both as action and drama The Next Three Days has strengths and weaknesses. What works best about the movie is the pressure it heaps on Crowe’s character. John Brennan is consumed by his determination to free his wife, so much so that we begin to distrust his reason and grasp on reality. He begins playing crook, getting tips from a former inmate and prison escapee, and piecing together the perfect plan. This leads him on long reconnaissance missions, harsh encounters with dealers of fake passports, and even thrusts him into a shootout at a drug house. All the while, John tries to play the role of single parent to his son, and keep his wife Lara (Elizabeth Banks) from losing hope in prison.
As the drama escalates, however, it begins to become difficult to believe the extents to which Brennan, a college professor, can go. There are also scattershot questions about the nature and possibility of justice which seem out of place in the context of a movie that is otherwise all about the plan and execution of the prison break. That sequence does unfold as the promised wild ride — a chase-and-shoot rollercoaster whose thrills are contained as much in the screeching and spinning cars as they are in the John and Lara’s navigation of each other’s personalities during the ordeal. Feeding this is the way Haggis manages to keep us continually guessing at whether Lara is, in fact, innocent at all.
(Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)
