15 Minutes (2001).

What did we all think of this one early 00s movie, directed by John Herzfeld (of the decent "Two Days in a Valley" (1996) fame) and starring Robert De Niro and Edward Burns?

If you ask me, although its not a particularly bad movie but overall it really isn't an especially good one and 5/10 is really what I rate it, middle of the road just around average, nothing special but not too terrible. I still own it on DVD and can give it a watch once every year or so.

Like a confused amalgamation of "Lethal Weapon" (1987) and "Natural Born Killers" (1994) with mixed bag performances and although the cinematography is nice and it is relatively well shot, it seems at times unsure where it is going and the writing is a little weak and the plot overall I just found not believable or convincing. Like what's up with the Fire Marshal playing a policeman and getting involved like that on the case (wonder if they partially based it on Van Damme's character in "Sudden Death" (1995) ) and the fact that they believe they could just film their killing spree and get away with it like that whilst becoming famous, hardly believable at all.

One scene was nice looking and visually exciting but it was a bit of a stretch also to believe that one of the killers was even able to smartly set up fire traps, it felt more like a serious adult version of "Home Alone" for a while.

Eerily however, watching it today (it was also released several months before that), one can almost feel the movie predict the happening of 9/11 and you know how people say at times life also imitates art?

Basically, worth a look once and if nothing to do, but other than that, it doesn't leave much of an impression. If however one does like Robert De Niro and Edward Burns, and found some interest in the aforementioned "Lethal Weapon" and other similarly themed buddy cop movies ala "48 Hours" and the lot, and various media-and-the-violence drama and satire flicks including "Natural Born Killers", "Man Bites Dog", "Funny Games" as well as say other Hollywood dark thriller flicks like "8MM" (1999) with Nicolas Cage, then "15 Minutes" is somewhat worth a look, but really, don't expect too much. And it at times requires even more of a suspension of disbelief than even certain outright action movies where lone hero or heroes take on tens or hundreds of bad guys single handedly and come out victorious, and the film SPOILER ALERT only had two villains, and one of our main heroes even gets killed in the movie and oh well...