5 jours pour survivre

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

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.

After a fashion, I really enjoyed this miniseries from 2004, "Five Days to Midnight," starring Timothy Hutton, Randy Quaid, Kari Matchett, Hamish Linklater, Angus Macfayden, and Gage Golightly.

Hutton plays physics professor J.T. Neumeyer who, while visiting his wife's grave on the anniversary of her death, finds a briefcase with his name on it. Inside are news clippings that talk about his death five days from now. At first, he thinks it's a joke but ultimately believes it was sent by his brilliant but eccentric student Carl (Linklater) and perhaps is not a joke. With an 11-year-old daughter to care for, Neumeyer isn't about to go down without a fight.

Complications abound, including a secret his girlfriend (Matchett) has been keeping, and his brother-in-law's financial difficulties. Then there's the implication of actually changing the future - which Carl warns him can't happen.

Quantum physics is extremely interesting to me -- parallel universes and the like, time travel - unfortunately, there was not as much emphasis on this in the plot; instead, the focus seemed to be on making it into a detective story. Less interesting.

My big problem was the way the discs were set up. I watched the first disc, returned it to Netflix, got the second, and immediately realized I hadn't seen one episode. I found out I wasn't the only one this happened to - the discs separate the episodes, one hour each, rather than one episode, two hours.

Timothy Huttton was excellent, and all the acting was good - Hamish Linklater is always wonderful -- and all of the acting is good. Because of Hutton, you really get involved in the story and in this man's plight.

If you watch this, you'll have questions - there is an excellent post on the message board that explains it all.

Can we change the future, and if we do, what are the implications? Are the past, the present, and the future occurring at the same time? If we try to change it, are we doomed to the same fate even if the circumstances change? Movies have been asking these questions for years. "Five Days to Midnight" also deals with the future sending us messages. It's all fascinating -- I just wish there had been more of it.

i did'nt mind this mini series.for a TV science fiction movie,it's not half bad.it kept me interested through out,and even riveted at times.the acting is very good in this movie.i'm not sure how accurate the movie is from a physics point of view,but so what,i enjoyed it.the basic premise is that physics professor J.T.Neumeyer(Timothy Hutton) discovers that he is murdered in 5 days(thanks to an anonymous tip from the future.so he must try to figure out who the murderer is and try to prevent his own killing thereby altering his destiny and maybe that of others.the whole thing involves theoretical time travel(sort of)in the present and in the future.i have to say,the ending caught me completely by surprise.i wasn't expecting it at all.i honestly thought this was a well done mini series.i'd give '5 days to Midnite' 8/10

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.