Professor J.T. Neumeyer (Timothy Hutton) and his daughter have never fully recovered from the loss of their wife/mother, but try to live a simple life of solitude in suburban Seattle. After 10 years, J.T. is finally seeing a women, who he really likes, and things seem to be going good for the family, until a mysterious briefcase shows up. J.T. opens the case only to find an old police report, dated five days in the future. The file is an unsolved murder case in which the victim is Professor J.T. Neumeyer.5ive Days To Midnight was a very unique and entertaining story, but for some reason, it was given to the SyFy channel and turned into a four part mini-series, rather than a movie. It's problematic, because to fill the extra time, they have to come up with a lot of side stories that never fully resolve themselves. Sometimes with Science Fiction, things are never resolved, because they simply can't be explained and I'm okay with that, but simple things that can be resolved should be, otherwise the story leaves more questions than it answers. That is the case with 5ive Days To Midnight, it's really well written and has an outstanding cast, but being that it's four hours long, there wasn't any reason to leave parts of the story unfinished. The conclusion was therefore the best and worst part of the whole thing. The ending was fast paced and exciting, real edge of your seat type stuff, but as soon as it was over, there was a small two minute conversation, and then that was it. With all the time the writers spent on the back story and the introduction to the characters, to just leave us with a story that basically just abruptly ends, was defiantly disappointing to me.What doesn't disappoint is the other three hours and forty-five minutes of this mini-series. I find that with mini-series, a lot of times the description and preview are actually better than anything else, but that's not the case here. This is a well written mystery, with some great action sequences, mixed with Science Fiction, and there is even a mob element to the whole thing. Timothy Hutton stars as the professor and gives the performance of a life time. How does one investigate their own murder and protect their ten year old daughter at the same time? His character was in a unique situation that really came off well. The whole package is outstanding, which is why the disappointing ending really bothers me more than it probably should.

This mini-series has quite some good moments. Some of the ideas are interesting and promising. The concept reminded me of "D.O.A." with Dennis Quaid. Sadly this show has got nothing in common with that wonderful movie. The murder mystery is not as exciting as I hoped it to be. The "changing the future theme" does add some depth to the mystery. And is the main reason why this show is interesting enough. If this concept hadn't been in this show than I wouldn't even had bothered watching this. When this concept presents itself you want to know how and why it is possible. Preventing death of the main character was something that didn't seem to matter much to me. The idea to give somebody a way to do it was more intriguing. The much anticipated climax is therefore completely unsatisfying. No decent or reasonable explanation is given of events. The loose ends don't get tied up. And the big question (the time travel concept) doesn't get answered at all. Maybe I could have forgiven the ending if the show had more to offer. A show with a premise like this has to have more twists and turns than it did. Or more comic relief or action to offer some light entertainment. At least something that would have taken my mind of the initial mystery. But the slow pace and lack of real suspense kills of everything that could have made the show really thrilling. The only thing that deserves special mention is the way they portrayed the relationship between the father (Timothy Hutton) and daughter (Gage Golightly; dead ringer for Drew Barrymore when she was little). It was very nice to see. Other than this there is nothing worth watching. Avoid this!

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.

Timothy hutton plays physics professor JT Neumeyer who while visiting his wife's grave discovers a thin silver brief case.He opens it and discovers a group of files showing pictures of his death and newspapers clippings.First declaring this as a practical joke, the events in the files play out slowly and now convinced that he'll die in five days, tries to find a way to prevent himself from dying and must change his destiny.The concept is great despite being a bit derivative, and there's plenty of room for tension, suspense, and great bits on philosophy, but the screenwriters miss their chances.The cast is comprised mostly of second rate actors with the exception of Hutton who tries his best at the lead role but ultimately fails towards the end of the film as he manages to go way over the top with his emotional scenes.There's also Randy quaid who is quite bland and one-dimensional, and Angus McFayden who is the worst of the characters as the over the top mob boss Roy Bremmer. Watch for his really bad scenes as he attempts to inflict depth into his character but comes off as laughable.Meanwhile the story has the ability to inject tension and sense of immediacy but all of it is loss in the bogged down story. Rambling and droning at some points it's difficult to understand why this couldn't have been a two hour film instead of a four parter.There's also plenty of room for philosophy and the concept of destiny and fate towards death, but there's nothing here as the story is mostly comprised of uneventful occurances, slim character development, and so much dialogue.While the film is engrossing at the beginning, it's ultimately lost halfway through as the plot is segued into the benign plot featuring McFayden which takes away from the actual reason why we're watching."Stay tuned for the shocking last minutes to 5 Days to Midnight" the Sci-Fi channel boasts which never usually works on me but I was rather interested to see where this was developing. But, unfortunately it was all just hype. I was expecting that Neumeyer's daughter would accidentally shoot him causing his death, and that we never got to see who sent the briefcase, but it's all pretty much explained in the end and nothing of the sort happens.I wanted an ironic, witty, and shocking ending beneath the muddled plot and droning dialogue, but alas we're not given anything but an obligatory and rather disappointing happy ending.Decent performances, a great concept but falls apart halfway through becoming routine and cliche. The writers never give this story and concept a chance to spread its wings and just keep it down to mediocre level.** out of **** stars.