Your time is up

Is John Forster the Seattle Slayer? Forensic psychiatrist and academic Jack Gramm certainly seems to think so; his testimony sent the serial killer with the cute name to death row. But now that the murderer is about to be executed, several hanging-upside-down-and-dead women are being found in their apartments.

Is the real murderer still out there? Is it a copycat? Is the Slayer's accomplice on the outside trying to make it look like the cops have the wrong man? Is it Gramm? Or is it the premise for a ludicrous "real-time" thriller starring Al Pacino?

But the real question is: who cares? You certainly won't — and that's long before the 88 minutes are up. The truth is, yet another "hoo ha!" performance from the Oscar winner as he runs around, alternately barking into a cellphone and waving a gun around, just doesn’t cut it. Nor does the idea of some random psycho phoning the shrink at random intervals, helpfully giving him an 88-minute countdown to his inevitable death ("tick tock, doc").

Clearly intended to add some excitement, this artificial time element instead amplifies the inanity of the plot, leaving Gramm to use the advanced psychiatric technique of suspecting everybody he runs into. His PA, his lecturing assistant, his lecturing assistant's troubled ex-boyfriend, the university dean, an overzealous student, some arbitrary campus security guard, the guy in the street who looks at him funny, all are so randomly accused of being the prank caller that you half expect Gramm to start suspecting himself.

To up the non-existent intrigue even further (and just in case you hadn’t realised this was a contrived whodunit), director Jon Avnet packs his silly little film with those supposedly dramatic lingering face shots, before actually resorting to desperate scenes of the suspects confessing one by one. It's no surprise when the actual killer seems to have been chosen with all the care of Gramm's wild accusations.

"That's my job, to be convincing," Gramm tells a student at one point. Time to pack it in Jack; you’d be hard pressed to find anybody convinced by this.