The title of writer/director John Herzfeld's 15 Minutes is derived from AndyWarhol's famous proclamation that everyone will eventually have 15 minutes of fame, but italso functions as a handy gauge of how far into the two-hour movie one has to watch beforerealizing that it's not going anywhere new.

This is not to say that Herzfeld isn't trying. Quite the contrary: 15 Minutes ispositively bursting at the seams with tiresome socially relevant "messages" that take aim atthe easiest of targets: criminals who exploit the justice system, tabloid TV's corruptinginfluence, and the police who are too worried about their image in an overly image-conscioussociety (weren't all of these themes already hammered home in Oliver Stone's much morecreative and contentious Natural Born Killers?). The problem is that all of thesemessages, in addition to having been worn out several years ago, are so garbled andclumsily explicated that the movie sinks beneath their weight.

By the time the first 15 minutes of the movie have elapsed, we have been introduced to Emil(Karel Roden) and Oleg (Oleg Taktarov), two visitors from Eastern European in New York.In quick succession, they steal a digital video camera, pay a visit to an old acquaintance whoowes them money, and, when he can't pay, stab him to death and break his wife's neck, allcaptured on handy digital video. We then meet Detective Eddie Fleming (Robert De Niro), amedia-savvy homicide investigator who is so well known that his picture appears on thefront cover of People magazine. He ends up teamed with Jordy Warsaw (EdwardBurns), an arson investigator, when they meet at the scene of Emil and Oleg's first crime.

At this point, the movie has not moved much beyond your basic police procedural.However, when Emil watches an episode of Roseanne Barr's (now-canceled) talk showabout fathers who sleep with their daughters-in-law and then sees an interview with amurderer who avoided trial by pleading insanity, he concocts a nifty scheme that will makehe and Oleg rich. See if you can follow: They will videotape themselves committing murder(which, of course, they've already done). Then, they will sell the videotape to a tabloid TVshow for a cool $1 million. When the video is aired, they will be arrested. However, withthe help of the $1 million, they can buy them the services of the best lawyers in town, pleadinsanity at their trial, and be put away in a mental hospital. However, once in the hospital,they will come clean and admit that they faked insanity, and they will be let free becausedouble-jeopardy laws prohibit their being tried twice for the same crime.

Writer/director John Herzeld, whose last feature film was the enjoyable, breezymulti-narrative crime saga 2 Days in the Valley (1996), piles on the flimsy ironyand cranks up the media satire full-throttle. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have thestrength of his own convictions. 15 Minutes is woefully uneven, lurching betweengrotesque violence and cheeky comedy (laugh hard when Oleg mistakenly refers to TheSilence of the Sheeps). During some moments, Herzfeld seems to be making a gritty,neo-documentary-style crime thriller, and some of the sequences of Emil and Olegcommitting their crimes are unnerving in their real-time video aesthetic. But, then, Herzfeldpulls back into a more mundane Hollywood tone, and then goes even further byundermining the movie's tension with misplaced attempts at comedy.

Stumbling through the narrative, Robert De Niro makes little impact as Eddie Fleming.Herzfeld tries to give the character some depth with a subplot about his trying to propose tohis girlfriend, Nicolette (Melina Kanakaredes), who happens to work for as TV newsreporter (see, the police and the media are literally sleeping together!). De Nirodoesn't seem to know what to do with Eddie: Is he a cynical hard-case or a decent cop with agood heart who knows how to work the media to his advantage? Equally befuddled isEdward Burns, whose role as Jordy is a more conventional hero type (read: decent andbland).

Kelsey Grammer, best known for his lead role on Frasier, looks the part of a TVtabloid show host, but his character is one-note. What? A tabloid host cusses whenoff camera, has no scruples, and would sell his soul for higher ratings? What wouldhave made 15 Minutes truly daring is if it had pulled a switch at the last minute andturned Grammer's character into the hero. Now that would have taken some gumption.

The only actors to look comfortable in their roles are Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov. This isa real accomplishment, especially because Emil and Oleg are essentially dullcharacters--amoral human burn-outs with no background or future. Roden is especially goodas Emil--with his skinhead look, wild eyes, and crooked, Joker-like grin, he's a believablepsychotic pretending to be a sane criminal pretending to be a psychotic. It's impossible to tellwhere the sanity ends the insanity begins, and that's what makes his character so unnerving.

Unfortunately, he and the rest of the cast are strapped into a message vehicle that is bothpainfully obvious and utterly obtuse about its subject matter. One can only imagine what ashocking piece of social commentary David Fincher might have made out of this. He at leastwould have maintained a tone suitable to the material. Herzfeld's schizophrenic approach to15 Minutes, on the other hand, betrays the fact that he is trying to satisfy both ahardened, socially conscious sensibility, which requires a harsh degree of realism and asharply ironic stance, and his desire to make a Hollywood formula movie in which the onlysurprise is how long it takes before the bad guys get what's coming to them. In situationslike this, the Hollywood formula almost always prevails, and 15 Minutes is nodifferent.

©2001 James Kendrick