To say that 88 Minutes is not among Al Pacino's best efforts would be a forgiving understatement. The ironic thing is that what upstages the movie this time around is not Pacino's peculiarly watchable overacting. He does not overwhelm this one with hoo-has and demonstrations of how much in love he is with his own voice, but there is still enough going against this movie to pull it under even the depths of anonymous mediocrity.

This is nominally a psychological thriller, but the traffic jam of red herrings and bouts of implausibility takes away all the thrills and throws any psychology out of the equation. Pacino's character spends much of the running time trying to keep his cool as a myriad of problems hit him right, left and centre. This might be a fair reflection of the way the actor himself reacts to the realisation that the movie is definitely not going the way he wants it to.

Pacino plays Dr Jack Graham, a forensic psychiatrist who is a star of sorts in his profession. He is a consultant to the FBI, teaches at Seattle University, his students love him, the female ones obviously more so. His eloquent testimony was also the main reason a serial killer named Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) received the death sentence. As the appeal process is exhausted and Forster is hours away from execution bodies resembling those of his alleged victims are uncovered.

The new killings might be the doing of a copycat, but may also point to the fact that Graham helped convict the wrong man. Complicating matters further is that some of the evidence of the new murders points to Graham himself, while a Darth Vader-like voice on his cell-phone informs him that he has 88 minutes left to live. Gary Scott Thompson's hectic script tries hard to make everybody in sight a suspect at one time or another and both Pacino's character and the audience are straining to keep track of the traffic in the plot - there are evil-looking motorcycle drivers, insinuating male students, female students with longing gazes and what have you.

Dr Graham remains commendably (if implausibly) cool and collected and spends most of the time spouting instructions to his assistant (Amy Brenneman) on the phone and receiving feedback while the phantom menace on his cell seems to be everywhere and capable of anything ranging from blowing up cars to taking prisoners.

It is strange and inexplicable that a script which has "straight-to-DVD-B-movie" written all over it has attracted a host of familiar names and faces apart from Pacino - William Forsythe, Debora Kara Unger, Benjamin McKenzie, Leelee Sobieski among others - but this at least serves as a redeeming feature of sorts. It might keep the audience in the cinema till the end, even though the events on screen tell them otherwise.

The ending itself is fittingly bad, but it does not register as such because it is very much in tune with everything that precedes it. It involves a couple of variations on the formula of the talking killer where all details are explained and all threads are tied up for the benefit of those in the audience who have not been paying attention. To be fair to the latter, paying attention is not very easy as most people would probably be wondering whatever happened to Pacino and his judgment about projects he takes on.