The problem of "The Next Three Days" is that it is neither nice nor stupid enough to stand out from the huge stream of thrillers that flood us. And I would not say that there is no potential, even though it is a remake. Director and screenwriter is Paul Hagis, who features in his biography films such as "Collisions" - considered by many to be highly overrated and overwhelmed, but not by us or at least not to such an extent - "Million Dollar Baby", "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Casino Royal", and Russell Crowe is the main actor, who always plays everything (I’m not mentioning Elizabeth Banks and Olivia Wilde because they had to be something like the icing on the cake), that is enough so we can have a prerequisite for something interesting.
The story is also intriguing. Almost improbably, the perfect world of teacher John Brennan was broken into pieces when his wife Lara surprisingly, almost like Kafka, was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for killing her boss. Three years later, John's only convicted of his wife's innocence, while taking care of his son, taught at college and looking for a way to prove his wife was innocent. Soon, however, the latest appeal fails and Lara sees suicide as the only way out. Faced with this even greater and unthinkable loss, John decides to find a way to get her out of jail, even if it means becoming a criminal or even a murderer. That is, it has a chance for a good study of moral, philosophical and legal problems and situations, and the development of characters in depth, as well as a real suspense, born from whether Lara really did the murder and whether John would be able to get her out of jail. Unfortunately, this potential is not fully deployed, the images are too schematic and too idealized. Crazy John is pure as a tear - the experience of at least a little depth with his father's story is almost ridiculous - Lara, who must be the absolute "gray" in order to work on the suspension, is also too one-dimensional. All in all, the most interesting images in the movie are the policemen. Even Liam Neeson goes almost unnoticed. As for the purely thriller elements, it is clear to us that there are not so many options for how things will develop, and personally for me, Haggis has chosen the lesser evil, which however slightly strains the film in a direction that does not I like it and it comes to me more. It's hard to say exactly, because I'm going to have to give you more than you need.
or the final, and for those who read only the beginning and end of the reviews, to summarize that thanks to the talents of the people who worked on the film, it is not a complete tragedy. You just have not developed the full potential you have, and instead of something really good, you have a medium-sized thriller that you will probably forget very soon.