subject: Watch 96 Minutes Full Movie 2012 Online [print this page] The young cast is up for the challenge, led by Brittany Snow, David Oyelowo, J. Michael Trautmann, Christian Serratos and Evan Ross. Each shows that they are in perfect tune with their directors vision.What Lagos shows more than anything is such a stroke of confidence in pacing, its almost scary. The helmer crafts white-knuckle suspense while simultaneously only making the thrills more intense by layering on the layers of the story. In her script that is so effectively played out by her players, she manages to touch on issues of the day such as class structure and racial tensions.It is clear who her influence is after witnessing 96 Minutes. The beginning of the film commences like a rocket, very reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs. No, its no first film by Quentin Tarantino, but Lagos talents -- we believe -- are ever building. Also, the time-shifting method of storytelling recalls Tarantino
A morality play of sorts, the movie focuses chiefly on a quartet of youngsters. Despite tough circumstances, Dre (Evan Ross) is set to graduate high school and get his life on track, but hes still worried about his old friend Kevin (J. Michael Trautmann), a sullen white trash kid whos doing everything he can to get jumped in with a local African-American gang, despite the fact that they look down on him and treat him as little more than a curiosity. Meanwhile, driven college student Carley (Brittany Snow), an impassioned opponent of capital punishment, is on track to graduate with highest honors; out celebrating with friends one night, she offers to drive home Lena (Christian Serratos), whos unsettled by the recent discovery of her boyfriends philandering.
Their paths cross when hotheaded Kevin, unable to break into a parked car, jacks Carleys SUV and takes she and Lena as hostages, leading a horrified Dre to have to make a split-second decision about whether to help his friend, and then how to best extricate themselves from the situation. Further intersecting these overlapping tales is local business owner Duane (David Oyelowo), also Dres uncle, who eventually finds himself in a unique position to help Carley, to whom he has no connection.The feature film debut of writer-director Aimee Lagos, 96 Minutes employs a familiar structure, flashing back and forth between the panicked aftermath of the carjacking and the events leading up to it, before finally paying off its hostage crisis. Built upon a framework of race and class, 96 Minutes obviously wants to make a statement about morality and vengeance, social mobility and compassion, and the like. But its simply not engaging enough, stuck somewhere between awkward didacticism and empty underclass rage. Theyre a step up from ciphers, but the characters are still just types, and not sufficient vessels for audience intrigue.
The movie is unpleasant and visually unengaging as well. Working with cinematographer Michael Fimognari, Lagos deploys an over-abundance of free-floating handheld camerawork in an empty effort to impress anxiety and other feelings upon the proceedings. It comes across as gimmicky and tired.Notwithstanding the slack of its narrative, some of the movies performances are good most notably Oyelowo and Ross, the latter of whom was quite solid opposite Terrence Howard and the late Bernie Mac in Sunu Goneras Pride. Trautmann, however, is all puffed-up underprivileged resentment, straight out of some fourth-generation music video knock-off of Pearl Jams Jeremy, or a Limp Bizkit song. Despite Kevins misguided mindset and lack of education, Lagos never locates a convincing voice for his rage and despair, and therefore any potential audience empathy is quickly eroded by all his bluster and idiocy. Watch free movies online
Brittany Snow and Christian Serratos are college students who are in the dumps due to an absent father and cheating boyfriend, respectively; Evan Ross is closing in on his high-school degree and planning for college, a prospect his gang-banging friends view with skepticism and thinly disguised envy; and Jonathan Michael Trautmann is a sad, sullen 16-year-old hoping to offset his feelings of helplessness by joining those same gang-bangers. Given that 96 Minutes opens with Snow cradling Serratos bleeding head in the back of an SUV while Trautmann brandishes a gun in the passenger seat, the question isnt how their paths will cross but when, and what lessons theyll inevitably learn.
Lagos draws strong performances from her young cast, as well as David Oyelowo, who plays Ross uncle and guardian, but they dont have much to work with. The younger characters, who still live in the environment that made them, are more easily defined, but Snow reads as a generic heroine and Serratos barely reads at allnot surprising considering she spends much of her screen time prone and whimpering. Lagos shuttles back and forth in time to explain how these four characters ended up sharing a predicament, but the scrambled chronology feels more like a defensive tactic, an attempt to disguise the storys familiar contours without actually adding any significant complication.
Its not surprising to learn that Lagos based the story on events that happened when she was a college student, or that her experience of both violent trauma and poverty comes secondhand. Although 96 Minutes proffers equal time to its quartet of protagonists, it becomes clear that its ultimate sympathies lie with Snow, which, given that hers is the only character whos both wealthy and white, undermines the films inchoate humanism. The title refers to the time elapsed between the initial carjacking and when Snow finds help, a fairly arbitrary marker given that the other characters dont share the same timeline. The movies coda, which gives Snow the chance to lecture one of her assailants, is not only superfluous but ugly, unloading a sense of smug superiority while ignoring the issues it purports to address.
