Washington's in desperate place in 'Time'

Friday, October 03, 2003

By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor

Even a police chief wears shorts on duty during the summer in steamy Banyan Key, Fla. The uniform looks good on Matt Whitlock, showing off his trim physique. He strides confidently through town, acknowledging friendly greetings from the citizenry.

	'OUT OF TIME' RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, violence and some language. STARRING: Denzel Washington, Sanaa Lathan, Eva Mendes, Dean Cain. DIRECTOR: Carl Franklin.

They like this guy, and we do, too. Matt's the main character in the sultry thriller "Out of Time," and he's played by Denzel Washington, who managed to make even the corrupt cop in "Training Day" sound halfway reasonable. "Out of Time" trades on Denzel's charisma because, while he's portraying a good cop this time around, Matt's not what you'd call an exemplary human being.

He's having an affair with a married woman, Anne Harrison (Sanaa Lathan), and tries to justify it with the notion that her husband (a gritty Dean Cain) knocks her around a bit. Matt's almost but not yet divorced from his wife, Alex (Eva Mendes), now working as a homicide detective in nearby Miami.

On the heels of a big drug bust and the confiscation of a large wad of cash, Matt may be feeling a little too pleased with himself, a little too cocksure, a bit invulnerable. In other words, he's a prime candidate to take the fall, a man whose flaws nominate him to be a choice chump in a brightly sunlit film noir.

Perhaps because it takes the proper time to develop the relationships and place them in a setting where they can simmer into something hot, "Out of Time" proves more plausible than most films of this type as it squeezes Matt through the twisty turns of the plot, penned by TV scribe and first-time screenwriter Dave Collard.

Matt's complicated relationship with Anne serves as prologue to a double murder in which too much of the evidence seems to implicate him. We've seen this setup before, in such movies as "Presumed Innocent." But in that one, we suspected the hero might have done it. In "Out of Time," we know he didn't.

That won't help him much. Investigators from Miami -- including Alex, who presumably doesn't know about his affair -- have arrived to help solve the case. Matt has to keep her from finding out about his dalliance, divert attention from incriminating leads and surreptitiously try to solve the case on his own.

Director Carl Franklin tightens the screws, often isolating Matt in his glass-walled office, where he's working the phones and sweating while watching the other cops dig for clues that could ensnare him. There's a nifty scene at a hotel where Matt wrestles with a suspect on a balcony that collapses high over the parking lot, then must dodge both the hotel manager, to whom he's lied about his identity, and Alex, who would be suspicious of his presence and his activities.

Matt's only ally is Banyan Key's medical examiner, Chae (John Billingsley), a seeming refugee from a "M*A*S*H" unit, with his wild hair, morbid sense of humor and affinity for the bottle. He's the comic relief, and, fortunately, he knows how to stop short of ridiculousness.

"Out of Time" returns Franklin, a first-rate director of character-based action films, to his roots. His early movies "One False Move" and "Devil with a Blue Dress" (the latter also starring Washington) featured, respectively, a small-town sheriff and a private investigator who seemed to be in over their heads. Matt doesn't know how much until it's almost too late.

Yes, the movie has details that you could pick at, such as Alex not knowing how to trace a cell-phone number in a town as small as Banyan Key. But the plot stems from the characters in "Out of Time," and the characters are in good hands -- those of both the actors and director Franklin.

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