15 Minutes (2001)

Filmed in the early summer of 1999 and was slated to be released in the spring of 2000 but pushed back to March 2001 by unknown reasons. Written and Directed by John Herzfeld (2 Days in the Valley), 15 MINUTES is an action crime thriller about a celebrity N.Y.P.D. detective (Robert De Niro) and a young, media-naive F.D.N.Y. Fire Marshall (Edward Burns) who team up to track down two sociopathic eastern European killers (Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov) – who are filming their sadistic murderous crime spree so they can spin into their own stardom. Herzfeld got the idea for this movie as a study of the country’s fascination with celebrity, thus the title’s reference to Andy Warhol’s famous quote about “15 minutes of fame”. This movie features a cast of familiar faces from Television’s greatest shows: Kelsey Grammar (Frasier), Melina Kanakaredes (CSI: NY), Avery Brooks (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Darius McCrary (Family Matters), and Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) to Small appearances from David Alan Grier (In Living Color), Anton Yelchin (Star Trek), and Charlize Theron (who made her film debut in 2 Days in the Valley). The last part of the cast list that I should point out is Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Departed), in one of her earlier film roles who plays as a Czech immigrant working as a hairdresser who witnesses the killers murder a couple. I thought both De Niro and Burns were terrific together, as have Roden (Hellboy, RocknRolla) and Taktarov (National Treasure, Predators). Kelsey Grammer played the same kind of character who reminded me of William Atherton’s DIE HARD character Richard Thornburg, but I thought he was good though. The most intense scene would have be when the killers kidnapped De Niro and the best is when Burns takes Roden to the abandoned warehouse threatening to kill him. I would have to say that 15 MINUTES is one of the most intense but entertaining movies I have ever seen.