“The Next Three Days,” directed by Paul Haggis and starring Russell Crowe, is unfortunately underrated. I remember walking out of the theatre with friend, both of us enamored with the film, and talking about its interesting portrayal of the human experience. Ever since I came home and saw the unfortunate reviews that night, I have wanted to defend it against its critics. It really is worth a viewing, and the overwhelmingly negative-to-mediocre reviews about it need some kind of counterbalance.
Crowe’s character, John Brennan, a normal English professor is trying to break his wife out of prison where she has been sentenced to life. John has no proof of her innocence. Every appeal has resulted in her conviction of murder, and the flashbacks to the evidence of the case seem to strongly implicate her. He simply trusts his wife’s character. There is no scene that gives determinative evidence to the audience, either, and they begin to wonder if John’s sacrifices for his wife are justified. He tries making fake keys, meeting with an escaped convict, watching YouTube videos, and it becomes nearly a frightening obsession. John becomes less socialable and more crazy. A scene depicts his wall like the famous one in “A Beautiful Mind.” The last half or third of the movie is a bit more like a conventional thriller, but retains the uncertainty until the very end.
The movie is consciously Quixotean, with John’s trust in his wife taking the place of Quixote’s insanity, and his attempts to break her out of prison often reminiscent of the charge toward the windmills. This is what drives the movie, and if it is appealing at all, makes it so.
Many critiques of this movie really miss this point of the film entirely. David Roark’s review from Christianity Today exemplifies this problem thoroughly:
“But the most absurd aspect is the premise [of the movie] itself. Regardless of how much he loves his wife, there’s no way a normal, intelligent person like John could ever reach the decision he does as a solution to his problem. Plus, there’s no reasoning behind his ability to go from scholar to action hero overnight.”
The famous Roger Ebert has the following to say:
“The film might have been more convincing if [Crowe had] remained the schleppy English teacher throughout. Once glimmers of “Gladiator” begin to reveal themselves, a certain credibility is lost. The movie is a competent thriller, but maybe could have been more.”
All I can say to Roark is exactly. Like it or not, you can’t very well critique the movie for this, that’s the point of it. The movie presents the viewer with the expression of the unadulterated relationality of a human being. It’s meant to be extreme, and it is meant to speak to the strongest desires of hope in the human heart.
As usual, Ebert’s criticism is written well, but many of his statements are as vague as an astrological reading. He only critiques the movie on this one point–that it is incredible. The rest of his critique either relies on this point or expresses his apathy about the film. It’s, of course, fine not to like the movie, but since Ebert is paid to write about it, I wish he were a bit clearer on why the movie is mediocre.
This movie’s theme is primarily existential and emphasizes relationality rather than rationality. His decision to break his wife out of prison is thus comprehensible, if not rational. The movie is not unaware of his irrationality; by the end, even his wife is telling him to give up. Also, his transition from professor to action hero is much more believable than these critics make out, interpreted correctly. First, he’s not actually an action hero, and doesn’t even resemble one until the final part of the movie. Second, he flubs up constantly, making believable mistakes until the end of the movie when his plan is systematized and in place. Third, the improbability of the plan is implicitly recognized my Brennan himself. However, he wills to attempt the near-impossible rather than accept his wife’s fate and her despair.
This main theme, the quest of John Brennan, reminds me of a quote from Gabriel Marcel:
“Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and calculations, a mysterious principle in connivance with me, which cannot but will that which I will, if what I will deserves to be willed by the whole of my being…To hope against all hope that a person whom I love will recover from a disease which is said to be incurable is to say: It is impossible that I should be alone in willing this cure…It is quite useless to tell me of discouraging cases or examples: Beyond all experience, all probability, all statistics, I assert that a given order shall be re-established, that reality is on my side…I do not wish: I assert; such is the prophetic tone of true hope.”
The movie isn’t perfect; I think the ending scene with the detectives (don’t want to spoil it for you) could have and should have been excluded. However, it’s the only movie that I’ve seen that does such a good job presenting human love, its relation to our desire for radical idealism, and our hope for that sympathetic principle at heart of reality.
A Humanities Symposium 