Fresh and Exciting

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Nick of Time has a rather novel concept of taking place in real time some years before the TV series 24 made this its central conceit.Johnny Depp plays an everyman accountant whose young daughter is kidnapped by villainous Christopher Walken and ordered to kill the Governor of California or else his daughter will die.Walken gives him a gun and a time limit of 90 minutes and it has to be done when the Governor is giving a speech in a hotel.Depp in an unusual role playing a normal guy has to keep his wits about him and try to find help but Walken and his cronies are watching his every move. Depp still manages to unravel a conspiracy.The film may have a preposterous plot, surely there are easier ways to kill the Governor but the film kicks in quickly and director John Badham clearly brings a Hitchcockian sheen to the film. You seem the time motif regularly in the film and an increasingly frantic Depp as time goes on.

There's one scene in "Nick Of Time" that really brings the movie down for me, and because I'm a negative person I'll start with it. The way they make the Huey character important to the plot is one of the most ridiculous cases of deus ex machina I've ever seen in a Hollywood movie. It requires such severe dumbness from the in all other scenes rather intelligent Mr.Smith that it totally yanks you out of the story. Smith has taken care of absolutely everything and is in complete control, he shows up out of nowhere every time Gene tries to warn authorities like he's psychic. But damn it, the plot needs to move along so let's lower his IQ 100 points for one scene and have him take an enormous risk by believing Huey's deaf. It doesn't hurt the overall suspense of the movie, but it's just such a huge facepalm of a scene. I got over every other plot element that didn't make sense (blackmailing a random guy who's never touched a gun before into killing a governor isn't exactly a brilliant idea to begin with), but that part still makes me groan. While up to then the movie has been fantastic, featuring inventive camera work, plenty of clever twists and Christopher Walken saying things, from that scene on you really just get a by the numbers action movie climax. Nothing wrong with a by the numbers action movie climax of course, but that first half came damn near to a perfect 10. "Nick Of Time" is still a must-see though, it could just have been even better.

Really enjoyed watching this thriller of the 90's. The film is a short run, describing the high paced story of an executive who visits the USA with his daughter, and who is then blackmailed by conspirators into assassinating the to be governor, else his daughter will be killed.It may look old fashioned now, but it definitely will keep one at the edge of his seat from start to end, like "Vantage point". Johnny Depp has played his part well. Everything in the film is commendable. It has good thrills and action sequences, and sudden twists that you probably would not even expect.Should be watchable

Johnny Depp plays Gene Watson, who disembarks off a train at Union station in Los Angeles with his daughter Lynn. He is approached by two people named Smith(Christopher Walken) & Jones(Roma Maffia) who claim to be cops who need his help. Unfortunately they lie, and instead Lynn is taken by Jones and held captive in a van. Smith informs Gene that he must assassinate the California governor(played by Marsha Mason) in the next ninety minutes, or his daughter will be killed. He is given a gun with six bullets, and sent to the hotel where the governor will be giving a speech, and that he better not tell the police, since Smith will be watching him closely the whole time. How can Gene get out of this situation alive? Interesting idea for a thriller to be told in "real time", and though it has good performances, it never really gels because the premise is so far-fetched. (Enlisting a random person to do a killing seems far too risky. Why not get a professional to do it?)Watchable enough if you have 90 minutes to kill, but that's all.