Themes: Perfect Crime, One Last Heist, Dishonor Among Thieves
Main Cast: Bruce Campbell, Jeremy Roberts, Anita Barone, Stan Davis, Gordon Jennison
Release Year: 1997
Country: US
Run Time: 69 minutes
Plot
Like Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, the low-budget, black-and-white thriller Running Time was edited to disguise its cuts, giving the illusion that the film takes place in real time. Cult hero Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead) stars as Carl. As the film starts, Carl is getting out of prison, and he tells the warden (veteran character actor Art La Fleur) that he plans to go into the laundry business, which he learned while working in the prison. Carl's old high school football buddy and literal partner-in-crime Patrick (Jeremy Roberts) picks him up outside the gates with a hooker in the back of his van. Things take an awkward turn when the hooker turns out to be Janie (Anita Barone), whom Carl dated and unceremoniously dumped in high school. After hitting it off and patching it up with her, Carl and Patrick head straight to their planned heist -- robbing the warden's laundry business. Along the way, they pick up their safecracker, Buzz (Stan Davis), Carl's prison buddy, and their driver. Carl is dismayed to find that Patrick has hired Donny (Gordon Jennison), a junkie with poor social skills, to drive for them. Their robbery plot goes awry when Buzz finds out that the warden replaced his safe while Patrick was supposed to be casing the office. During the delay, Patrick bickers with Carl, and there's unnecessary bloodshed. To make matters worse, the payload turns out to be far less than expected, Donny is nowhere to be found, and the police are on their tail. Wounded and desperate, Carl makes plans to meet up with Patrick at Janie's apartment. Writer/director Josh Becker shot Running Time on 16 mm, in sequence, in ten days. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
The movie is of particular interest for two points. First, it was filmed in real time similar to Robert Wise'snoir boxing film The Set-Up (1949). Secondly it also tracks as a continuous take with no cuts, rather like Hitchcock'sRope (1948). For aesthetic and practical reasons Becker opted for black & white, offering a neo-Noir feel and giving him less problems in scene transitions. One truly has the sense that you are following the action, uninterrupted for the entire 70 minutes.
Plot
A prison inmate (Campbell) receives early release only to immediately rejoin his former criminal cohorts in a heist. In the hour or so he rekindles a romance with an old flame (Barone) and realizes the "good ol' days" with his partner in crime (Roberts) just might not have been so good.
