The Next Three Days (Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks) – My hometown, Pittsburgh, serves as the setting for this meticulous, taut thriller directed by Crash Academy Award winner Paul Haggis. Russell Crowe plays John Brennan, a community college professor whose wife, Lisa, is convicted of murdering her boss. Haggis opens the movie with a scene in a restaurant with the Brennans, his brother and sister-in-law. The women get into a verbal battle about the difficulty of working for a woman with Lisa admitting to having problems with hers but not because she is a woman. The next thing we know, Lisa is arrested. The movie then flash-forwards at least a year as John and the couple’s son, Luke, come to visit her in prison.
All three members of the family are devastated by the situation with John holding the fort dutifully at home as single dad while doing everything possible through the legal system to get her a new trial. When that falls through, the movie starts. As played by Crowe, John Brennan is totally devoted to his family. He uses his academic background to research every possible alternative, including breaking her out of a prison where there had never been a successful escape. He meets surreptitiously with the author of a book (in a cameo by Liam Neeson) who broke out of several prisons and is given sobering advice: the Pittsburgh Police can shut off access out of downtown within 15 minutes due to the bridges (one of the ‘Burgh’s nicknames is the City of Bridges spanning its three rivers) and cover the freeways, airport, and train station within 35 minutes. The next hour of the movie involves his plan for rescuing his wife.
Haggis takes a lot of time to set this up. And when it pays off – the attempted escape itself – it feels a little anti-climactic, if still exciting. There are wonderful little performances, too, most notably by John’s parents, played by Helen Carey (she was Louissette in Julie and Julia) and a slimmed-down 72-year-old Brian Dennehy, who has little dialogue but says it all with his face. Olivia Wilde, a talented and beautiful actress who you will be seeing a lot of in the future, puts in a layered performance as the single mother whose daughter plays with Luke in the park and who has eyes for John. This is a subtle plot device to show us John’s total devotion to his wife.
I really enjoyed this movie due in part to recognizing so many of the scene settings in Pittsburgh. But Haggis is a great writer (he also has Oscar nominations for Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, both for Clint Eastwood). His script holds your attention. His biggest problem is length here, and cutting 15-25 minutes would not have hurt. But don’t let it keep you from going to see The Next Three Days.