5 días para la medianoche

My overall reaction is that I feel like I completely wasted five hours of my life watching this miniseries. While there were a few red flags in the beginning, the writing seemed to be carrying the movie. First, the red flags: the director had an extremely annoying habit of throwing in slow motion in places where it was completely out of place. Actually, there's almost never a reason for slow motion. Directors and writers don't normally write "This scene is done in slow motion" into the script. If the action in the take appears to be incredibly lame during the editing, they'll try a slow motion effect before throwing the scene away. So the high frequency of slow motion shots is a give away that the director is a hack.

** Spoiler Ahead **

Other than the director's attempt to sabotage the movie, the writing was very good for the first 4 hours and 50 minutes. It wasn't typical Sci-Fi fare, but a seemingly well crafted murder mystery. The twist was that the victim was investigating his own murder. Not bad. But there was no mystery to the ending. It was the equivalent of having the cavalry ride in at the last minute, only dumber. There was no attempt to clean up the loose ends. No attempt to explain how the professor escaped his destiny. It might have been modestly satisfying if there was an attempt to explain how the future benefactor knew that a single bullet would be needed at the last moment.

Not since Steven King's "The Stand" was there a more disappointing ending to a promising story line.

I thought that I had a better review for this mini-series, but it looks like I may have shut it away in the trash vault. So, for just this one I am going to give you the short, short version of what I witnessed. 5ive Days to Midnight was one of those classic mini-series that probably did very well while on television in keeping the suspense high and the anticipation even higher, but when it transferred onto DVD it didn't succeed as well. When one has the opportunity to watch this series from beginning to end within the course of one day, the excitement and momentum slowly decreases. Let me be more exact.

The first three episodes were great. It was this beautifully mixed bag of drama and sci-fi that I know the Sci-Fi channel has a firm grip on. It kept me guessing and wondering what would happen next. I couldn't quite figure out exactly how all the pieces were going to fit together and it was enjoyable, then you put the second disc in and watch the final two episodes and everything going for this film goes down the toilet. The final two episodes are nothing but filler and the ironically planned confusing ending. I felt that these final two episodes just did not react well with the first three, there seemed to be something genuinely missing from all of this. It was as if the creators had the horse running at full speed at first, then allowed it to gallop into the final lap. It lost momentum, speed, and thrill when the second disc hit my DVD player.

The acting was decent with Quaid proving why the "TV" niche is his best friend. Hutton could have done a bit better, portraying this struggling victim to this predestined crime, but instead I think he realized this was "television" and went with some sub-par skills. While the acting was just average all around, I was o.k. with that, it was the story that I was hoping to get most of my strength from. Sadly, the story was good, but not great. There were huge, gaping plot holes that just were never covered or corrected. When you are doing a time traveling film like this, you need this to make a coherent statement. It is like writing a paper without using any punctuation, you don't know where to stop or end and it ends up a jumbled mess. That is what happened with the final two episodes, the jumbled mess caught up to the creators and there was only one way to stop it … clichés and unoriginality.

Overall, I was impressed to begin this series, but by the end, I had lost it completely. The fourth day is nothing but filler, and that set the mood well off for the final day. What began as this very interesting time travel drama/murder/mystery eventually turned into a regular program that you could find on any station. Something happened, and as we the viewers may never know, those involved do. I suggest to everyone checking out the first disc while leaving the second behind. If you need to know how it ends, forget about it. The first three days will leave a better taste in your mouth than the final two days, and overall you will feel better (even if you don't know how it ends!)

Grade: *** out of *****

Yes, we watched enthralled; at least the last episodes. We felt it was too much special effects, all too moody music, and way too much time wasting melodrama. Knowing we had a four hour stretch to weary our way through, we took our time until we knew we were near the denouement, at which point we watched more closely and could then feel the excitement building.

But remember: it's television. Television is made in an entirely different way, no matter the artistic ambitions. This would never work in a watered down two hour format at the theatre - it just plays as television. If you're all right with television, fine; if television leaves you flat and wanting to see real cinema instead, this 'movie' will leave you flat too.

The device of this movie demands a 'conceit' - and a consequent suspension of disbelief - that you either buy into or else you won't like the whole thing much.

After a night of sleep we woke mostly feeling we'd wasted our time. It's not so much the movie makers' fault - remember: it's television.

I'm not kidding, this really hooked me; one could almost say that this ought to come with a warning, letting people know that this may very well grip them and their attention, and not let go until the final credits roll. From the first moments, this is interesting and engaging. The concept is not completely original, of course, but this is a good take on it, and I found myself surprised by most of the twists. This follows a physics professor trying to uncover the truth behind a police file that details his own murder, with the date being five days later. The plot keeps you watching, and there are unexpected developments that make sense. There's only one brief instance of obvious exposition, and apart from that, the story-telling is rather well-done. The cinematography and editing are great, with the one exception of the occasional "sluggish" time effect, which isn't always used well. This builds atmosphere and suspense well, and can be intense. It's exciting when it tries to be. The script is well-crafted and clever. Humor tends to be appropriate in tone and amount, though one person is pushed a little excessively as comic relief. The characters are well-written and credible. Dialog can be smart. The music is cool and fitting. Production design is excellent throughout. Special effects tend to look marvelous. The acting is convincing, every single performance, including the kid. Throughout, this is fairly well-done. The climax is well-done. It does, unfortunately, not completely live up to the incredible things that the audience imagines during the course of the show, but it wraps stuff up well. The DVD comes with trailers for this and three other things, as well as four informative and well-done featurettes. While I can't speak for any other version, the one I watched did not have nudity or language, and was in five episodes of about forty minutes each, so three hours and twenty is the full running time. I recommend this mini-series to any fan of science fiction-thrillers that deal with the idea of time and how set in stone the future is. Huh. The Sci-Fi Channel doesn't always suck. Before The Lost Room and this, I wouldn't have believed that to be possible. 7/10

Rating: ** out of ****

The two-hour Sci-Fi Channel made-for-TV movies may almost always suck, but you can usually rely on their miniseries for quality acting, writing, and special effects (I loved Taken and Children of Dune, really liked Dune, and there is nothing currently on TV that can compete with the new Battlestar Galactica). Five Days to Midnight breaks the channel's success streak, proving to be easily its worst miniseries to date.

5DTM stars Timothy Hutton as J.T. Neumeyer, a physics professor with a young daughter (I forget the actress's name, but she looks a lot like a young Drew Barrymore) and a life insurance agent named Claudia for a girlfriend (Kari Matchett). While visiting his late wife's grave on a Monday morning, his daughter discovers a briefcase nearby. Upon opening the case, J.T. is a little shocked to discover that the contents are files pertaining to his own murder, which will occur in five days, at 3:55 A.M. on Friday.

He initially laughs it off as a hoax, but when a few of the little "prophecies" come true, he becomes a fast believer and sets out to find out who would murder him and why. He has only a few clues, but there is a list of suspects: Carl Axelrod, an eccentric student of his; Brad, his financially desperate brother-in-law; Roy Bremmer, a man he's never even heard of; and even his own girlfriend Claudia, who is not all that she appears to be. With the clock ticking down and only the help of a homicide investigator (Randy Quaid), J.T.'s obsession with saving his own life may come at the cost of many others.

Undeniably, 5DTM boasts one of the niftier premises in recent memory. Playing like a mix of Minority Report meets 24, the combination of sci-fi and mystery has always appealed to me, so there's no question that a good portion of the miniseries is genuinely engaging and entertaining (mostly in the beginning and middle segments).

A lot of the series is intentionally predictable, and in a fun way, like you just know that gift from his girlfriend will be the same parka he wears in that photo from the briefcase where he's lying dead, or the car his girlfriend rented will be that green Cherokee in that other photo, and so on and so forth. 5DTM also has fun with the implications of possible time travel and the changes one could set forth in the fabric of time. I was also thankful for the fact that a lot of the characters actually caught on to the possibility of time travel quickly and even accepted it without much question.

There are a lot of decent to good performances, especially Timothy Hutton, who capably handles the functions of a likable everyman. The girl who plays his daughter is terrific as well, and Kari Matchett would be a dead-on match for Naomi Watts if she had a smaller nose and slightly larger cheeks. Angus Macfadyen makes for a menacing villain as Bremmer, who's so evil he clearly can't be Neumeyer's killer.

Unfortunately, the miniseries begins to stumble by the second half of 'Day 4,' and is just a complete and utter mess by 'Day 5.' The writers can't seem to be able to keep much consistency in the film's concept of time travel. Without giving much away, when certain changes are made to the timeline in the film's climax, newspaper articles and photos from the future are also altered to fit the new timeline (kind of like in Back to the Future), and the changes occur immediately. However, in 'Day 2,' Neumeyer changes a woman's fate, preventing her from getting killed by a collapsing tree. After this change in time, his daughter then reads all the newspaper articles from the file the next day, which still state that the woman died because of the tree. Wouldn't that portion of the article have been altered?

The climax is just terrible (moderate spoilers in this paragraph), with every major suspect conveniently converging in the same location with murder on their minds. Just as bad, at least three of the potential killers wouldn't have even targeted Neumeyer if not for the intervention of the briefcase itself, and the one suspect that continuously threatens his life also seems most likely to the deed, but a tacked-on, idiotic surprise revelation completely disregards that possibility, placing the blame firmly on one of the characters that wouldn't have killed him if not for the briefcase's intervention. I can't think of any plausible reason this person would have killed Neumeyer prior to the appearance of the briefcase, but a bullet that conveniently fits into a gun is supposed to lead us to believe it was this one character all along.

The identity of the killer is perfectly predictable, since it's always the person we're least likely meant to suspect. Even though I came to the realization very early, I still doubted myself because, as stated earlier, there's just no reason this person would have any true motivation to kill Neumeyer without the briefcase.

It's unfortunate, but with such an awful ending, I just can't go out of my way to recommend 5DTM. It's not the movie's only major flaw, the miniseries is constantly padded to fill its allotted running time, and the director goes insanely overboard on the choppy slow motion, often ruining any developing suspense or momentum. Had the miniseries been about forty-five minutes to an hour shorter, I might have said yes as a video rental, but unless if you've got lots of time to kill, this isn't rewarding enough to spend the time and money.