Nick of Time (1995)

Sometimes you don't like a movie particularly, but you like something about it, would it be an on-screen encounter between two actors you wish to see together, or some movie artifact, or the general mood of a movie, or sometimes even the title, and that's what leads me to speak about "Nick of Time"

Gene Spencer (Johnny Depp) is an accountant and father of a small girl, arriving to Los Angeles by train do attend to some business, little did he know that he will get trapped in some major assassination business by a mysterious man (Christopher Walken) and his assistant (Romma Mafia) (i'm serious that's her real name), who hold his little daughter hostage, making him understand that he either carries the dirty business or else....as the plot advances we clearly see into this whole plan, and Gene gets grip with reality, finding as always more ressources then he ever thought he was capable off, getting into the unmerciful world where politics and business merge.

The movie is notable for some reason, although far from being a great one, first of all, it is shot in real time, meaning is that a minute in the movie equals a minute in the plot, Johnny Depp and Christopher get away clean with rather a simple and straightforward story, because good actors know how to struggle with average script, the music is good, and is in the whole Bernard Hermann Vertigo-like tradition, of entrapment and claustrophobia, and the cinematography is a clear hommage to Alfred Hitchcock.

That's maybe the sad thing perhaps, an idea like that would find it's right place if they had somebody as Hitchcock to work on this story, because the promisses were interesting, but this movie has a real small running time 82 minutes including the opening titles, and no it's not boring, and it has a great title, and after all it all happens practically in a luxurious hotel, which means it helps with the entrapment feeling, and well if i don't recommend it, i don't advise against it, all i can say is that i spent a gold hour and half watching it, remember, not all movies are masterpieces, some are just average.