The Next Three Days

The old warhorse Russell Crowe and the very pretty Elisabeth Banks star in this escape from Pittsburgh thriller, at least I think it's a thriller. Maybe it's a drama, or a psychological thriller. I don't really know what the criteria are. I liked it. Russell plays a school teacher who wants to break his wife out of jail. He really isn't prepared for a life of violent crime and it shows. His wife is teetering right on the edge, so you don't know if she is going to keep it together or flake out and blow the whole deal. Also, we don't really know whether she is guilty or not. We do know her husband believes she is innocent, but he might be a schmuck. The first half of the movie is all set up, the second half is the escape. As in all well laid plans, things go awry, but time and again they outwit their pursuers. Do they eventually get away? I'll never tell, but I wonder why they picked Caracas as a destination? Is it because we don't have an extradition treaty with Venezuela? Or might Hugo's is willingness to thumb his nose at the US have anything to do with it? I mean, we put an innocent woman in jail. Or did we?

Looking around for a picture to include, I didn't find much. Most of the scenes from the movie are just like everyday life anywhere in the US. The picture here started with the war wall from the house. He starts with a map and then starts tacking up pictures and writing notes on it using a big fat felt marker. The notes are big enough for the audience to read and they help fill in some bits without having to have conversations to explain things to the audience. Kind of like texting. YouTube makes a couple of appearances through how-to-do-it videos, though I can't tell you if it was mentioned by name. The tennis ball trick was kind of clever.

Update February 2017 replaced missing image.