15 Minutes: Critic Reviews

A clumsy urban thriller.

The movie is nothing if not ambitious. The movie is nothing if not overdone. The movie is also, well, pretty much ... nothing.

Herzfeld's a secondhand-meister, simply regenerating themes, styles and a story line that we've all seen -- and tired of -- somewhere before.

It doesn't feel like a cookie-cutter cop thriller, and, on top of that, it's actually about something.

Alley flasher, pubescent paperboy, toy with a broken squeaker. Edward Burns sounds like those things, but plays none of them here. He's fire marshal Jordy Warsaw. That sounds like a Pauly Shore character; Shore would arguably act with greater conviction.

Exceptionally violent, intense DeNiro thriller.

"15 Minutes" is a cops-and-killers action movie naively intent on telling you things you already know about the societal pitfalls of tabloid media.

It sounds like some crank on the next barstool venting about how everything is crap.

And so now, in the unambitious tradition of the eminent Natural Born Killers - comes the spectacularly underachieving 15 Minutes.

Andy Warhol's theory gets yet another Hollywood workup in this slezy actioner, this time around with two foreign criminals as media-hungry badasses.

It's as if Herzfeld believes all that stuff about Americans being hopelessly infantile -- he wanted to make a really good movie, but he just knew he'd lose us if he did.

Herzfeld has created an alternate New York City that is just unpleasant to look at, plain and simple.

Relentless yelling by two usually fine actors spoils this timely crime drama.

A mean, ugly exploitation picture with sophomoric delusions of grandeur.

If yesterday's headlines are today's trash, think of writer-director John Herzfeld as the friendly neighborhood garbageman who brings the dumpster straight to your door.

It's a film that has about 15 minutes of fervor to it before it gets grounded into a mixture of sleaze, violence, and heartless melodrama.

Entertaining, and it managed to surprise me one and only one time, which is more than most buddy cop movies manage

It forced me to think about many issues pertaining to our culture, which is much more than most movies bother to do.

So eager is this film to grapple with its demons, that it doesn't realize how much like them it has become.

Yeah it's tough to condemn violence and glorify it at the same time.

La cinta, lejos de ser mas que el thriller que termina siendo, aspira a ser una vision critica de la obsesion de los Estados Unidos por la violencia.

No se deje sorprender, pues el resultado final es mas bien enganoso.

Herzfeld settles for the most mundane execution of his idea.

Forgettable hyper-kinetics with confused values.

Deserving of more than 15 minutes of fame.