5 Dias para Morrer

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.

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.

Kudos to SCI FI Channel for a great mini-series!

I enjoyed the four days of wonderful suspense and time-loops drove me crazy guessing. The Sci-Fi boards were abuzz with over 700 posts!

The whole concept of giving watchers the clues online to begin to make their guesses as to the ending was a brilliant touch of intelligence at work!

I won't give any endings away - but I will say that if you watch this you will not be sure until the very ending exactly how it ends.

Timothy Hutton was the star and he handled it with aplomb. The great supporting cast was headed by Randy Quaid and Kari Matchett. Hamish Linklater was wonderful as the manic Physics student as were Angus MacFadyen as the mobster and David McIlwraith as the brother-in-law.

But the major acting discovery was GAGE GOLIGHTLY as Hutton's daughter. She was marvelous in every scene she was in and stole the limelight from whomever was with her. Natural talent like that is to be appreciated. Not to mention her remarkable resemblance to the young Drew Barrymore. It would be interesting to see Drew Barrymore in a prequel-sequel of this mini-series - if she weren't probably overpriced for SCI FI channel?

All in all - we were kept on our seats for 4 wonderful days of suspense, trying to outguess the wonderful writers. Kudos to all of them!

I recommend this highly for mystery and suspense buffs. Not just Sci-Fi fans. It's a winner!

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

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.