Wow, I'm amazed at how cool this film was. The entire construction of plot, character and general build is just amazing.What I do not like about it is that the town is supposed to be Everett Washington, but is actually Vancouver, British Columbia.While I think that the entire film is just awesome, the setting should have been Vancouver. It is just very obvious.The buildings, streets, general layout all points to Vancouver...the train station, sky-train, buses and Chinatown/Gastown all reads Vancouver, so why not just call it Vancouver.That aside, what a magnificent film, cast, crew and writers. I am really overwhelmed by the entire package, and yes...I knew who had sent the briefcase, but no...I was not expecting the murderer to be who it was, although I had a suspicion.Very clever, very crafty.It just comes to show, that there are still some creative heads in the film industry with original ideas.

I loved this show. I never knew it existed until my friend brought it home from the video store. We just finished it and I had to share what I thought. THIS DOES INCLUDE SPOILERS!!First of all, yes, the slow motion scenes sucked. Who needs to see a tree that many times and I didn't get why we had to watch the leaf blow into the door window at 'Mandy's' house.Second, I loved the ending. Sure, it didn't explain how the folder changed to 'J.T.' living, but if you can't figure it out that he changed his future, so the file changed, get a clue.Third, during the whole movie, I was thinking..Did he do it? Did she do it? Wait, maybe he did it. I love movies like that.Fourth, Did anyone notice the dog before the movie explained it? It was the dog he almost hit, that belonged to Mandy. Coincidence? Of course not.Fifth, Jesse from the future sent the file. That would make sense. She knew they would be there, and knew her father would figure it out.I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes mystery until the end. Just fast forward through the slow motion shots, lol.If I had to choose one thing I really didn't like, it would be that the DVD didn't explain things about the movie, like the dog. Or the many clocks.Feel free to e-mail me if you wish. I love a good debate.

Rating: ** out of ****The two-hour Sci-Fi Channel made-for-TV movies may almost always suck, but you can usually rely on their miniseries for quality acting, writing, and special effects (I loved Taken and Children of Dune, really liked Dune, and there is nothing currently on TV that can compete with the new Battlestar Galactica). Five Days to Midnight breaks the channel's success streak, proving to be easily its worst miniseries to date. 5DTM stars Timothy Hutton as J.T. Neumeyer, a physics professor with a young daughter (I forget the actress's name, but she looks a lot like a young Drew Barrymore) and a life insurance agent named Claudia for a girlfriend (Kari Matchett). While visiting his late wife's grave on a Monday morning, his daughter discovers a briefcase nearby. Upon opening the case, J.T. is a little shocked to discover that the contents are files pertaining to his own murder, which will occur in five days, at 3:55 A.M. on Friday.He initially laughs it off as a hoax, but when a few of the little "prophecies" come true, he becomes a fast believer and sets out to find out who would murder him and why. He has only a few clues, but there is a list of suspects: Carl Axelrod, an eccentric student of his; Brad, his financially desperate brother-in-law; Roy Bremmer, a man he's never even heard of; and even his own girlfriend Claudia, who is not all that she appears to be. With the clock ticking down and only the help of a homicide investigator (Randy Quaid), J.T.'s obsession with saving his own life may come at the cost of many others.Undeniably, 5DTM boasts one of the niftier premises in recent memory. Playing like a mix of Minority Report meets 24, the combination of sci-fi and mystery has always appealed to me, so there's no question that a good portion of the miniseries is genuinely engaging and entertaining (mostly in the beginning and middle segments). A lot of the series is intentionally predictable, and in a fun way, like you just know that gift from his girlfriend will be the same parka he wears in that photo from the briefcase where he's lying dead, or the car his girlfriend rented will be that green Cherokee in that other photo, and so on and so forth. 5DTM also has fun with the implications of possible time travel and the changes one could set forth in the fabric of time. I was also thankful for the fact that a lot of the characters actually caught on to the possibility of time travel quickly and even accepted it without much question.There are a lot of decent to good performances, especially Timothy Hutton, who capably handles the functions of a likable everyman. The girl who plays his daughter is terrific as well, and Kari Matchett would be a dead-on match for Naomi Watts if she had a smaller nose and slightly larger cheeks. Angus Macfadyen makes for a menacing villain as Bremmer, who's so evil he clearly can't be Neumeyer's killer.Unfortunately, the miniseries begins to stumble by the second half of 'Day 4,' and is just a complete and utter mess by 'Day 5.' The writers can't seem to be able to keep much consistency in the film's concept of time travel. Without giving much away, when certain changes are made to the timeline in the film's climax, newspaper articles and photos from the future are also altered to fit the new timeline (kind of like in Back to the Future), and the changes occur immediately. However, in 'Day 2,' Neumeyer changes a woman's fate, preventing her from getting killed by a collapsing tree. After this change in time, his daughter then reads all the newspaper articles from the file the next day, which still state that the woman died because of the tree. Wouldn't that portion of the article have been altered?The climax is just terrible (moderate spoilers in this paragraph), with every major suspect conveniently converging in the same location with murder on their minds. Just as bad, at least three of the potential killers wouldn't have even targeted Neumeyer if not for the intervention of the briefcase itself, and the one suspect that continuously threatens his life also seems most likely to the deed, but a tacked-on, idiotic surprise revelation completely disregards that possibility, placing the blame firmly on one of the characters that wouldn't have killed him if not for the briefcase's intervention. I can't think of any plausible reason this person would have killed Neumeyer prior to the appearance of the briefcase, but a bullet that conveniently fits into a gun is supposed to lead us to believe it was this one character all along.The identity of the killer is perfectly predictable, since it's always the person we're least likely meant to suspect. Even though I came to the realization very early, I still doubted myself because, as stated earlier, there's just no reason this person would have any true motivation to kill Neumeyer without the briefcase.It's unfortunate, but with such an awful ending, I just can't go out of my way to recommend 5DTM. It's not the movie's only major flaw, the miniseries is constantly padded to fill its allotted running time, and the director goes insanely overboard on the choppy slow motion, often ruining any developing suspense or momentum. Had the miniseries been about forty-five minutes to an hour shorter, I might have said yes as a video rental, but unless if you've got lots of time to kill, this isn't rewarding enough to spend the time and money.

Timothy Hutton gives another unexpected brilliant television performance on the par of his portrayal of Archie Goodwin in the A&E productions of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Further he is reunited here with Kari Matchett (one of the ensemble players of that series), who deftly tunes her character between utter trustworthiness and blatant suspect without upsetting the delicate balance of suspense. The other key players also deliver masterful, convincing performances, particularly Gage Golightly, who steals every scene she's in and leaves us loving it.The cinematography, especially the frequent use of slow-motion and delay-action, is meant to add to the suspense but winds up feeling a bit silly and overplayed. Also, the frequent product-placements (the gift of Playstation 2, the insurance receptionist's salad and drink from McDonald's, the Mountain Dew can in Carl's apartment, the rental car agent's perky emoting of, "And you'll be putting that on your Visa?", the Eclipse gum display at the airport kiosk, et cetera ad infinitum) tend to tear the viewer out of the story in amusement - we're more interested in seeing which of the sponsors' products are going to show up next than we are in watching for clues.Spoiler ahead:Allowing for all of the occurrences that lead up to the climax/denouement of the story is all well and good, but the primary questions: "What is a college professor, not in the habit of frequenting such establishments, doing in a strip club at 3:55 am?" and "Who, at that time, wants him dead, and why?" are never resolved. Obviously, by the fifth day, the reason he is there is to solve the mystery, but the mystery as it originally appeared for him to solve is never explained. The first four hours of the miniseries were intriguing and curiosity-provoking, but the final hour was unsatisfying from a physics or even a science-fiction standpoint, and cheesily derivative of "Back to the Future" from an entertainment standpoint. From either standpoint, the final hour is condescending to the viewer, and in my opinion cheapened the overall impact of the story.