Movie Review: 15 Minutes

Movies like 15 Minutes and the upcoming Series 7 face a similar dilemma: How can you comment on America's obsessions with fame and violence when reality keeps outpacing satire?

John Herzfeld's thriller 15 Minutes takes its name from Andy Warhol's indelible contribution to popular culture: the statement "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." The comment has become as overused as it was prescient; at this point 15 seconds seems the norm.

We don't need a movie to tell us that some people become so seduced by the prospect of celebrity that they'll do horrid, horrid things. We also aren't exactly lacking in thrillers in which mismatched investigators track psycho killers.

So the surprise here isn't that 15 Minutes isn't a masterpiece; it's that the movie works at all.

Robert De Niro plays Eddie Flemming, a media-savvy New York City cop whose celebrity quotient is boosted by his mutual back-scratching with tabloid TV-show host Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammer). Their relationship echoes that of Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito's characters in L.A. Confidential, except there's little sense that Eddie has been corrupted.

Edward Burns plays the younger, more idealistic crime-fighter Jordy Warsaw, an arson investigator who winds up teaming with Eddie on a double-murder case involving a fire. The movie doesn't make too much of the tensions between them; Eddie asserts himself as the duo's alpha male but doesn't really resist Jordy's participation, because the veteran values his junior colleague's intelligence.

They're on the trail of a pair of Eastern Europeans who recently arrived in New York: Emil Slovak (Karel Roden), a wily, rodent-faced psychopath who commits murder to settle an old debt; and his heavyset partner, Oleg Razgul (Oleg Taktarov), who fancies himself an auteur as he captures their American adventures and misdeeds on a stolen video camera.

To Emil, collecting such evidence seems foolishly dangerous -- until he considers how the duo might benefit from the notoriety the tapes would generate for them.

Writer-director Herzfeld (2 Days in the Valley) has smartly cast two unknowns as the villains; they become familiar faces before our eyes. The pair are far more distinctive and charismatic than your boilerplate baddies: Oleg, with his misty, baby-blue eyes, embodying the artist as overgrown child; and Emil retaining a playful glint in his eye as he dissects American culture.

"I love America," Emil declares. "No one is responsible for what they do."

It's to Herzfeld's credit that the movie's caustic observations hit the mark as often as they belabor the obvious. When Jordy's boss tells him he must be judged on the negative press coverage he generates -- regardless of whether he's actually at fault -- the reprimand plays less like a bit of easy cinematic cynicism than an accurate reflection of real-life cynicism.

Less subtle is Grammer's Hawkins. TV's Frasier does a decent job of carving out a different persona here, someone who has convinced himself that his exploitative work has actual value, but Herzfeld sends him down a path that can end only in a cliched comeuppance.

15 Minutes isn't the most tightly plotted thriller you'll ever see. Characters emerge from an exploding room with no explanation. One character plans a romantic restaurant proposal at what turns out to be a particularly busy lunch hour. Some of the dialogue is clumsily expository, such as when Jordy explains to an apprehended mugger: "I'm an arson investigator. We do everything cops do."

Also, scenes between Jordy and Daphne (Vera Farmiga), an Eastern European woman on the run from Emil and Oleg, appear to have been axed with little regard for the holes that are created. Daphne comes across as a strangely underdeveloped character, as does Melina Kanakaredes' TV reporter, who doubles as Eddie's girlfriend.

Yet the movie offers some true surprises as it veers from formula to make its larger points. There are twists here that you wouldn't think a star-driven action film would have the guts to include.

Despite the graphic violence, Herzfeld sticks to his themes rather than letting his movie become a brainless bloodbath. He even gets in a good joke about the "A film by ..." credit currently being disputed by writers and directors.

Adding credibility are De Niro in one of his relaxed, unmannered performances, and Burns, who doesn't show much range but plays the hunky, glowering young hero nicely. Still, the movie belongs to Roden and Taktarov as those nasty, culture-critiquing, media-exploiting, Eastern European killers. Herzfeld is right: We can't help but watch them.