The Next Three Days

Anyone looking to break their loved one out of prison should look no further than The Next Three Days for a step-by-step playbook.  It’s so easy!

First, disregard everything your lawyer and a jury tells you, they are obviously wrong.  Next, ask a guy who has admittedly escaped from seven prisons, how to escape from prison (don’t worry, he’ll be easy to find!) Next, sell every tangible possession you have on Craigslist.  Next, go to a gun shop and offer the guy money under the table, he’ll definitely sell you an unmarked gun.  Hell, he’ll even show you how to use it!

Next, learn how to break into a car (for help, search “how to break into a car” on YouTube, yes, YouTube). Next, go your closest ghetto and watch, from inside your not-at-all-noticeable Prius, how drug dealers interact. After only an hour or so, you’ll figure out where the stash house is.  Go rob it, you’ll only have to shoot two guys!  It’ll be easy!

Now, once you’ve switched your loved one’s medical documents (a cinch), and made a fake key (YouTube again) and cut a hole in a random fence (easy pisye) you’ll be ready to go.

You’d think things get harder after you break them out of prison.  No way!  All you have to do to avoid the cops is keep changing your clothes. Easy!  Oh, and better rent a car as well, that always throws them off.

Russell Crowe manages to do all this, and more, in the span of two very long, very boring hours in Paul Haggis’ The Next Three Days.  Crowe, like Haggis’ film, is a bust.  Elizabeth Banks, who plays Crowe’s self-effacing wife, is not.  She flexes her dramatic muscle well. More please.  The rest of the film however, is worse than I’ve described. I haven’t even mentioned the cops hot on Crowe’s tail, who take every lead in stride, examining all the details and reaching accurate conclusions over and over again.  Oh, and they do it all in the span of a few hours.  Two detectives solve a large city police department case in a few hours.  Right.

Haggis’ first directorial effort was the overrated Crash, followed by the underrated In The Valley of Elah (such a good film, that it inspired me to start this site).  But in The Next Three Days, he’s gone for cheap thrills; usually an easy way to increase the dollars in your bank account.  The movie cost $35 million, it’s made $6.5 million.  Oops. D