2K Replay: OUT OF TIME

 by Adam Riske

Nominated for “Best Director” (Carl Franklin) at the Black Reel Awards. He lost to F. Gary Gray for The Italian Job.

• Best Scene/Moment: The hotel balcony fight between Denzel Washington and Alex Carter.

• Best Song: “Joyful Girl” by Soulive featuring Dave Matthews.

• Best Merch: A “Denzel Washington Out of Time Production-used Banyan Key Office Badge” which you can bid on starting at $89.00. This is a cool piece of memorabilia. You can also bid on the badge of the comedic sidekick character (played by John Billingsley) but why would you want that over Denzel’s badge?

• Director Check: Out of Time was directed by Carl Franklin, who started out his career as an actor appearing in movies and many episodic television series (such as Caribe, Good Times, McClain’s Law, The A-Team, and Roseanne) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He began his feature directorial career in 1989 with two smaller films - Eye of the Eagle 2: Inside the Enemy and Nowhere to Run (not the Van Damme one but another one starring David Carradine and Jason Priestley). Franklin’s breakout film was the 1992 crime thriller One False Move, which was championed greatly by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. It’s fantastic. His follow-up, 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress (Franklin’s first collaboration with Denzel Washington), was also critically acclaimed. Franklin’s feature directing output has been few and far between since then, popping up every few years with movies like 1998’s Meryl Streep drama One True Thing, the 2002 Morgan Freeman-Ashley Judd thriller High Crimes, and 2003’s Out of Time, which did decent at the box office and with critics but is seen as minor in the career of Denzel Washington nowadays. Franklin has directed a lot of high-profile television in recent years for shows like House of Cards, The Leftovers, and Mindhunter. His most recent film was 2012 Bless Me, Ultima, which received a small theatrical release.

• Double It with This 2003 Movie: In the Cut

• Year 2003 Movies to Trailer Before It: 2 Fast 2 Furious, Bad Boys II, Matchstick Men

• Draft Day or Out of Time? Draft Day

• Mall Movie? I’m going to lean towards yes since it’s not prestige-Denzel. It’s more of a noir programmer.

• Only in 2003: Dean Cain with a prominent role in a theatrically released studio movie.

• Scene Stealer: John Billingsley. It kinda sucks giving him the nod since he’s trying so hard to be the scene stealer.

• I Miss: Sexy movies.

• I Don’t Miss: Dean Cain.

• 2003 Crush: Eva Mendes.

• 2023 Crush: Eva Mendes.

• What I Thought in 2003: I was all-in on the early 2000s “Saturday Night Specials” (a phrase originated by the late John Singleton) period of Denzel Washington’s career where he popped up in programmer star vehicles 1-2x a year. I thought Out of Time was fun when I saw it in theaters. It’s not great Carl Franklin (see One False Move and Devil in a Blue Dress for that) but it’s an entertaining modern noir and the role of a flawed man covering his tracks is very much in Denzel Washington’s wheelhouse (Flight is another example).

• What I Think in 2023: Out of Time is fine. I miss movies like this being made and the Florida locations look beautiful but the movie’s a little flat and confusing in its final act. The reason to see Out of Time is the great Denzel Washington performance (Eva Mendes is really good in this too as Washington’s estranged wife). Out of Time feels like a spiritual sequel to Washington’s 1989 tropical cop thriller, The Mighty Quinn. They would make a good double feature together.