Credit where credit's due. Robert DeNiro does a good job. Unlike everyone else, he plays a human being. He also has the good sense not to appear until most of the clumsy exposition is out of the way, and also to -
Spoiler! Spoiler!
The hero (a fireman/cop) seems a nice enough guy at the start, which makes his subsequent moral nosedives all the more depressing. Not just depressing; sickening, too, since the film seems unaware that its hero is doing anything particularly wrong; in fact, he never loses his self-possession, and we're clearly meant to be cheering him on. Ugh. For the record, here's the worst of it (more spoilers ahead, obviously):
(1) He kidnaps the villain (who was already under arrest), and takes him to a warehouse for a reason that's never clearly stated - I presume it's to inflict pain.
(2) He confronts the lawyer who got the villain off on a contrived insanity plea to deliver some high-horse posturing. And what does he say? The kind of what-about-the-victims-of-crime talkback radio speech that ought to remain buried there. Does it occur to ANYONE in this kind of film that the purpose of courts is not, repeat NOT, to exact revenge?
(3) He shoots the villain. Six times. Arguably, the first shot freed a hostage, and, if you think the villain needed to die, then the second shot achieved something, too, in killing him; but the remaining four shots were pure bloodlust. There was little to justify even the first shot. The "hero" was no longer a policeman, but a private citizen taking the law into his own hands; moreover, the villain had already been decisively defeated (you have to pay attention to notice this, since by the final scene the director has long since forgotten what his film was supposed to be about). What's particularly disgusting is the way this scene is presented. We see law enforcement officials smiling to themselves as the hero - now a criminal himself - walks away from the scene of the shooting. Nobody stops him. Our hero, we're meant to think, having become a gunslinger, is now a MAN. Wrong. He was a man at the start of the film; he is now a petulant child.
The film ends with so much random, tawdry sensation that you have to stop and ask: WHAT, exactly, is its complaint against random, tawdry sensation on television?
Spoiler! Spoiler!
- to die halfway through, before the film becomes truly dreadful. Afterwards I found myself forgetting that he had been there at all. A human character ... in "15 Minutes"? Surely I must have imagined it.
The hero (a fireman/cop) seems a nice enough guy at the start, which makes his subsequent moral nosedives all the more depressing. Not just depressing; sickening, too, since the film seems unaware that its hero is doing anything particularly wrong; in fact, he never loses his self-possession, and we're clearly meant to be cheering him on. Ugh. For the record, here's the worst of it (more spoilers ahead, obviously):
(1) He kidnaps the villain (who was already under arrest), and takes him to a warehouse for a reason that's never clearly stated - I presume it's to inflict pain.
(2) He confronts the lawyer who got the villain off on a contrived insanity plea to deliver some high-horse posturing. And what does he say? The kind of what-about-the-victims-of-crime talkback radio speech that ought to remain buried there. Does it occur to ANYONE in this kind of film that the purpose of courts is not, repeat NOT, to exact revenge?
(3) He shoots the villain. Six times. Arguably, the first shot freed a hostage, and, if you think the villain needed to die, then the second shot achieved something, too, in killing him; but the remaining four shots were pure bloodlust. There was little to justify even the first shot. The "hero" was no longer a policeman, but a private citizen taking the law into his own hands; moreover, the villain had already been decisively defeated (you have to pay attention to notice this, since by the final scene the director has long since forgotten what his film was supposed to be about). What's particularly disgusting is the way this scene is presented. We see law enforcement officials smiling to themselves as the hero - now a criminal himself - walks away from the scene of the shooting. Nobody stops him. Our hero, we're meant to think, having become a gunslinger, is now a MAN. Wrong. He was a man at the start of the film; he is now a petulant child.
The film ends with so much random, tawdry sensation that you have to stop and ask: WHAT, exactly, is its complaint against random, tawdry sensation on television?