Luke Mitchell Zane Holtz Jason Ritter Kevin Gage Leven Rambin Kris Kristofferson
7 Minutes
is about a group of high school friends trying to pull off a bank robbery in
their small town. One has just
gotten out of prison, but basically they’ve had no experience in pulling off
such a job. Sam (Luke Mitchell)
has a pregnant wife and has just been laid off at his work. He’s trying to make ends meet by
selling drugs, which his older brother Mike (Jason Ritter) has gotten him
into. Their friend Owen (Zane
Holtz) is the one just released from prison, and his father (Kris Kristofferson),
who calls him “Numbnuts” (he clearly has little respect for him) has two bits
of advice: “Don’t go in with
anyone who has more to lose than you do” and “Don’t get caught.”
The three friends pick up a drug order from a
cold-hearted drug dealer, but get spooked on the way home when they think they’re
being spotted by some policemen.
Owen, desperately not wanting to have to go back to prison, dumps the
drug down the toilet, and things only go from bad to worse from there. They are now in debt to the dealer who
wouldn’t think twice about killing them, so they cook up the idea of robbing
the bank owned by Sam and Mike’s uncle. Well, their ineptitude is apparent right away when
they buy three plain white masks that only hide their faces, leaving their hair
and the outline of their heads obvious to those who know them, and it being a
small town, the bank owner immediately recognizes Sam and calls him by name.
As happens with small-time operators who are
less than discreet, others want a piece of the action, so things go from bad to
worse, and there is a bloodbath.
The script by the director Jay Martin contains
suspense and fairly well developed characters. A really unnecessary gimmick (often used by filmmakers
nowadays) is to show fragments of the story in jumbled time. I’m not sure why filmmakers choose this
format—perhaps to increase suspense—but I find it annoying. The viewer has to work that much harder
to figure things out. The actors
are well cast, and a clever sub-plot shows Sam’s pregnant wife (Leven Rambin)
cleverly outwitting one of the bad guys.
A suspenseful crime drama weak on story.
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