I love crime stories. I don't know a better way to create conflict and drama, and I think most authors would agree with me; war, of course, is another excellent way to imbue the story with conflict and drama but one could argue that war is a crime. Anyway, I love crime films, and this film does a good job of keeping its audience interested in what is going to happen next.
Basically, one morning a husband and wife and their child here a knock on the door and it's the police with a search warrant. They burst into the house and find the wife (played by Elizabeth Banks) washing some blood off of her trench coat. She is arrested for the murder of her boss with whom she had a heated argument today before, plus she was seen leaving the crime scene. She maintains her innocence but goes to the county jail, where she stays through the trial and subsequent appeals. The husband (Russell Crowe) comes up with a plan to break her out but finds out that he only has three days to do it.
The film takes its time in developing the husband and the changes he has to go through to break his wife out of jail. And even though the premise strains credulity, it makes an honest effort of maintaining as much plausibility as possible. The acting was good. The direction was good. The script was good. It was a good movie with a couple of really tense scenes and a couple of interesting twists. But it was not outstanding.
I liked it. What I didn't like was how the film played with the original crime that the wife commits or doesn't commit. Throughout the film the audience is kept guessing, but then at the end of the film we find out what happened, and I don't know about you, but I hate being manipulated by carefully edited flashbacks designed to create tension then at the end of the film the director essentially says "see, I got you". 3/5
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