15 MINUTES

Well, once again Hollywood is misleading audiences with its film titles. This time it's the new Robert De Niro movie, 15 Minutes. This film was much longer than that. It's a good thing too, because the movie was really good. It would have sucked had they tried to sum up the whole movie in 15 minutes. De Niro (do we really need to list titles?) plays a New York cop that is constantly in the public eye, thanks to a reporter played by Kelsey Grammer (Frasier). Along come two Russian immigrants who want to live the new American dream. What's the new American dream, you ask? To become famous by making yourself more outrageous than those freaks on Springer. Throw into the mix a young fire marshall played by Edward Burns (Brothers McMullen, She's The One) and you have a story that can't possibly be told in 15 minutes. Hell, I couldn't even do it in 15 words! Nevertheless, the movie turned out to be a pretty good flick. I wasn't a really big fan of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. I think it glorified the killing and didn't get the message across about the media being to blame. In 15 Minutes, it's all about that: turning society into hungry little zombies who watch the tube for today's juicy bits of violence. I'm all for watching a guy fall off a roof and landing on a fence, crushing his balls into oblivion. But deep down I know that by watching those kinds of things, I revert to the lowest form of animal. Nevertheless, it's still pretty damn funny. Check out 15 Minutes.