The Next Three Days Is Smart, Put Together Well By Art Byrd

I was hesitant about seeing The Next Three Days. The storyline follows Lara (played by Elizabeth Banks), a wife thrown in jail for a murder. Lara’s husband, played by Russell Crowe, comes up with an escape plan.

But John is just a college instructor, an ordinary guy. I wondered how they could pull off the breakout without the film leaning towards utter stupidity.

But they did. The Next Three Days is one of the smartest and sharpest movies I have seen in 2010. The movie is written and directed by Paul Haggis, who directed the Oscar winner Crash.

After exhausting all means for an appeal, Lara and John realize that she will be in prison for the rest of her life. Their young son, Luke, is having a hard time with Lara in jail.

The way John puts the breakout plan in action was very interesting. Especially when he finds out -- well into the plan -- that Lara will be moved from a county jail to a prison in three days.

First, he finds career jail escapist Damon Pennington, played in a great cameo by Liam Neeson. Pennington has become an author entertaining readers with his exploits. John learns from Damon how to observe a break-in pattern in jail security, how to flee before the city wide perimeters are set up by police, and the importance of getting passports.

John goes to the shady part of town to get passports but is beaten and robbed by street thugs. At every turn John runs into some sort of roadblock. Then his luck turns around: he gets the passports and learns how to break into a medical truck and access Lara’s medical records on the Internet. There is a great scene where John uses one of the thugs that beat him up to get money from drug dealers.

What I enjoyed was that most of the steps of the plan were explained as John was doing them.

Haggis’s use of flashbacks was crucial to the story. Did Lara do the crime or not? Throughout the film, we are not sure. Neither is John, even when Lara confronts him about her guilt or innocence.

The movie was shot in Pittsburgh. The city became part of the action with car and subway chases. 

The Next Three Days is not doing well at the box office, but the movie is smart and seems very realistic. But even more than the action, the heart of the movie is watching a husband’s willingness to do anything to believe in his wife’s innocence and to keep his family together.

Edited by Michele Ristich Gatts