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15 Minutes (2001)
Dir. John Herzfeld
Stars: Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, Kelsey Grammer, Avery Brooks, Melina Kanakaredes, Karel Roden, Oleg Taktarov
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Action
Pixelsurgeon Verdict
Reviewer
Jason Arber
External Links
Official Site
IMDB Review
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15 Minutes 15 Minutes, written and directed by John Herzfeld, pulls no punches when it comes to commenting on America's shallow need for fame and its hunger for violence on TV.
Edward Burns plays a fire marshall who teams up with famous NY cop Eddie Fleming (Robert De Niro) to try and track down two killers from Eastern Europe who come to the US looking for money they were owed from a bank heist.
One of the killers, Oleg (the excellent Oleg Taktarov) steals a video camera to make a video documentary of his buddy Emil (Karel Roden) killing people so they can sell it to sleazy TV host Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammer).
Much of the movie is shown through the lens of Oleg?s camera as he applies cheap digital video effects to the scenes of carnage and violent murder. But Oleg?s comments to camera and need to film everything (even being chased through New York streets by the police) give 15 Minutes its strong dark humour.
The movie is fast, violent and funny, with taut direction from Herzfeld. Although Burns and De Niro give good performances, the real stars of the movie are the bad guys Oleg and Emil. A difficult film to take seriously, it did make you leave the cinema with more thoughts in your head than your usual buddy action movie.
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