Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

15 Minutes Blu-ray Movie Review

Is It Any Wonder?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 22, 2015

Filmed in 1999 and released in 2001, 15 Minutes features one of Robert De Niro's best performances since Heat, but the film was poorly received and isn't well known today. The writer/director, John Herzfeld, has been more successful in television, especially with docudramas like The Preppie Murder and HBO's Don King: Only in America, where the factual underpinnings helped constrain Herzfeld's tendency toward narrative sprawl. But one area in which Herzfeld excels is casting. In his first feature film, 2 Days in the Valley, he assembled an ensemble that included James Spader, Eric Stolz, Teri Hatcher, Keith Carradine and Danny Aiello, only to have the movie stolen by an unknown blonde who radiated danger in all of her scenes until she turned heart-breaking on a dime. "Wherever did you find her?" Herzfeld recalled being asked repeatedly. The actress was South African native Charlize Theron, now an Oscar winner for Monster and most recently seen as Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road.

Theron appears briefly in 15 Minutes, playing the head of an escort service (and speaking in her native Afrikaans) to thank Herzfeld for jump-starting her career. She's just part of the rich supporting cast surrounding De Niro and Edward Burns in a nasty satire on how crime has been sensationalized in modern America. Both thematically and stylistically, 15 Minutes traces its lineage back to Network, Sidney Lumet's prescient satire of media corruption, except that Herzfeld approached his story in the form of a police procedural. If he had managed to maintain the laser-like focus of Paddy Chayevsky's Network script, 15 Minutes might have turned out better, but unfortunately the film loses its way in the second hour, relaxing and slowing down just as it should be tightening and speeding up. The weak finish hobbles what could have been an effective film, but the first hour and a half of 15 Minutes is worth revisiting for the impressive work by De Niro, Burns and several relative newcomers, including Vera Farmiga, who got the part by pretending to be, like her character, a Czech immigrant. Only when shooting began did she drop her accent and admit to Herzfeld that she'd been born and raised in New Jersey.

The setting is New York City in the late 1990s, where the leading tabloid news show is Top Story, hosted by Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammar). A new producer, appropriately named Cassandra (Kim Cattrall), has the thankless job of trying to rein in the show's excessive violence and make it more respectable, but Hawkins wants to push the boundaries even further. He's furious when his camera crew misses the heart-pounding arrest of a Jamaican serial killer by the city's favorite hero cop, Det. Eddie Fleming (De Niro). It would have been a ratings winner.

Hawkins is about to get the story of his life from two immigrants, a Czech named Emil Slovak (Karl Roden, Hellboy) and a Russian named Oleg Razgul (UFC champion Oleg Taktarov). Oleg loves American movies, introduces himself as "Frank Capra" and, at the first opportunity, steals a video camera to make a film of his and Emil's adventure in the New World. (The actor shot his own footage during production, which has been edited into the film.) Emil's concerns are more practical. He and Oleg have just been released from prison in the Czech Republic for a bank robbery, and Emil wants their cut of the money from the partner who escaped to America, Milos (Vladimir Mashkov). Milos doesn't have the money. Emil reacts badly.

Thus begins a crime spree by Emil and Oleg that prompts the formation of an ad hoc partnership between celebrity detective Fleming and an arson investigator from the Fire Department that no one has heard of named Jordy Warsaw (Burns). (Note the last name; Warsaw's parents were Polish, which means that it took Herzfeld to cast Burns in a non-Irish role.) The FDNY is involved, because Emil set Milos' apartment ablaze to cover up the murders of Milos and his wife, but Eddie quickly seizes both the case and the media spotlight, angering Jordy's superior, Deputy Chief Duffy (James Handy). Funding and resources are all about public perception, and Duffy pushes Jordy to get out there and represent his fellow firemen.

Eddie's police colleagues, including his partner, Leon Jackson (ST:DS9's Avery Brooks), can't understand why their star is making time for a punk fire marshal, but Eddie grudgingly takes Jordy under his wing, and Jordy grudgingly lets him. The two track down a Czech woman named Daphne (Farmiga), whom Jordy spotted outside the apartment building blaze. She inadvertently witnessed the murders of Milos and his wife, and now Emil and Oleg are looking for her too. Charlize Theron's escort service madam tried to recruit her, which is the link that brings everyone together at the upscale hair salon where Daphne washes hair. Chaos erupts, and several cops are wounded. Emil and Oleg have now graduated to prime time crooks.

A quick study, Emil has already formulated a master plan for success in his new home. Having observed the awesome power of celebrity in America, he plans to use the media to get rich, courtesy of Oleg's videos, then reach out to the public for forgiveness (as people seem to do so readily on daytime TV). On the legal side, he'll plead insanity because of the terrible abuses inflicted on him as a child in Soviet-ruled Czechoslovakia. Emil's plan may not be foolproof, but he's picked up on the fact that the American criminal justice system is full of loopholes, and notoriety is one of them.

Herzfeld sets up all of this effectively, including several additional subplots that pay off later. Much credit is due to Karel Roden's convincing portrayal of Emil as a goofy maniac who cannot possibly control his temper long enough to carry out his plans, but will cut a wide swath of destruction before the delusional scheme collapses. Even De Niro's savvy Eddie Fleming doesn't understand, at first, just how dangerous a man he's dealing with. At about the 75-minute mark, however, the focus shifts from Eddie to Burns's Jordy, who must take the lead in ensuring that Emil does not escape punishment, even as the young fireman's own career is derailed by adverse publicity.

Unfortunately, Herzfeld gets sidetracked in new subplots when he should be tying up old ones. Instead of sticking with Jordy in his quest to bring down Emil and Oleg, he introduces an entirely new character, a celebrity defense attorney played by real celebrity attorney Bruce Cutler, with whom we spend far too much time. The attorney's role should have been reduced to a few lines, since the success of Emil's defense strategy is treated as a foregone conclusion. Because 15 Minutes is primarily about the media arena, a third-act detour into the legal system slackens the narrative, which is a fatal error after a filmmaker has battered an audience with such brutal and shocking events as occur earlier in the film. Too late in arriving and with too many loose ends, the conclusion of 15 Minutes becomes a sour and meandering denouement to a story that needed a sharp and satisfying resolution.

15 Minutes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

15 Minutes was shot by the late Jean-Yves Escoffier (Good Will Hunting), and it has a peculiar look that is specific to the era in which it was filmed. As Herzfeld explains in his commentary, he always intended to cut back and forth between the movie camera and Oleg's video footage, and he asked both Escoffier and his other department heads to design the filmed portions so that they would intercut easily with imagery from a consumer-grade camcorder, circa 1999. Today that would be a simple matter, because consumer digital HD cameras can record high-quality images, and any inconsistencies can be resolved in post-production via digital intermediate. But when 15 Minutes was made, DIs did not exist, and camcorders were not only SD but also analog.

As noted in the commentary, the key point of commonality between the film and video portions of 15 Minutes is color. Because camcorders of that era often exaggerated bright colors, Herzfeld chose to do so deliberately wherever possible, so that the colors of the filmed and video segments would match. The most commonly saturated color is red, but green is frequent as well (see screenshot 13 for an example of both.) Even blues are often overstated (screenshot 25), and night lighting takes on a yellowish cast (screenshot 24). This distinctive use of color helps provide consistency, as Herzfeld and editor Steven Cohen (Don King: Only in America) cut back and forth between their shots and Oleg's, although the difference between the two formats is always obvious, because the resolution of Oleg's video is so much lower than film.

Warner's MPI has newly transferred 15 Minutes at 2k from an IP for this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, and the results are an extremely accurate presentation of the hyper-real, tabloid TV style that Herzfeld wanted. Leaving aside Oleg's video, the image is sharp and detailed, even though both the camera and the people are frequently in motion; credit the use of spherical lenses with their ability to retain focus over a greater distance. Blacks are solid, and shades of black are finely rendered; the scene where Eddie and Jordy separately return to the site of the fire set by Emil and Oleg is a good example. The grain pattern is extremely fine, which, contrary to popular opinion, is entirely possible with Super35 photography. Warner has mastered the disc with an average bitrate of 30.57 Mbps; the compression has been carefully done.

15 Minutes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 soundtrack for 15 Minutes, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, has a number of dynamic sequences, including the pursuit of Emil and Oleg on foot through midday Madison Avenue traffic, complete with shots fired. The audio mix effectively creates the chaos all around and the sudden shock of various impacts as people and objects come flying from unexpected directions. A scene involving an unexpected fire (I can't be more specific) is shockingly loud, and another sequence of personal combat (for lack of a better term) is both visually and sonically gut-wrenching. The mix's dynamic range is broad, although the bass extension is not deep enough to compete with a major action film. Despite the plethora of accents, the dialogue is always clear. Much of the film's score was written by Anthony Marinelli (Internal Affairs), but some of it was contributed by J. Peter Robinson (Wayne's World), after New Line Cinema decided it was unhappy with Marinelli's work.

15 Minutes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over the New Line Home Video's 2004 InfiniFilm DVD. Omitted are a subtitle "trivia" track and the DVD-ROM features, which included the script.

• Commentary with Writer/Director John Herzfeld: The writer/director provides a lively and engaging commentary filled with detail about the cast and the production. He discusses auditions, points out the many real people who played themselves (such as the immigration official in the opening sequence) and explains how much of Eddie's and Jordy's behavior (and even their wardrobe) was derived from conversations with the film's technical advisors. The descriptions of production logistics are especially worthwhile, particularly the frenetic foot chase on Madison Avenue (in record-setting heat) and the conflagration in a condemned building near Times Square (done with real pyrotechnics and no CG flame).



• True Tabloid Stars (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 15:05): A short featurette on the evolution of tabloid TV, featuring such hosts as Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Sally Jessy Raphael and Deborah Norville.



• Does Crime Pay? (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 21:13): A panel discussion on who profits from crime and of its portrayal in 15 Minutes. Participants include former LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman (who became famous in the O.J. Simpson case); attorney and TV host Gloria Allred; Stan Goldman of Loyola Law School; film and TV writer Ted Haimes; and author and (currently) true crime TV host Aphrodite Jones.



• Deleted Scenes (w/Optional Commentary by John Herzfeld) (480i; 2.35:1, enhanced): No "play all" function is available. Each scene must be played individually. The most interesting is "Firebug", featuring a deleted character played by Joe Grifasi, who reveals personal details about Jordy Warsaw that are omitted from the final cut.


• An Unexpected Visit (2:06)
• Firebug (1:04)
• The Blind Lady (1:08)
• Unedited Tracking Shot (1:11)
• Lost Chase Scene (4:08): Note that the film playing in the theater where part of this chase occurs is Herzfeld's 2 Days in the Valley.
• Unedited Prison Scene (1:59)



• Oleg's Videos (480i; 1.33:1): Portions are included in the film, but this is the unedited footage. The names are listed on the "Features" menu but have been omitted below to prevent spoilers.
• X's Murder (4:41)
• Y's Murder (5:27)



• "Fame" by God Lives Underwater (480i; 1.33:1; 3:39): This is the music video for the version of the song heard during the film.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 1.85:1, enhanced; 2:24): The trailer does a good job of focusing on the film's satirical content—in some ways, better than the film itself.



• Rehearsal Scenes (480i; 1.33:1, enhanced; 10:27): Herzfeld discusses his rehearsal process in the commentary. These are videotaped excerpts, with the completed scene playing in an inset window.

15 Minutes Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

15 Minutes is a flawed work, but it has worthwhile elements, and one can discern the film it might have been. If one can accept its flaws, there is much to appreciate, and the package of extras assembled by New Line Film for its DVD (and mostly repeated here) offers valuable insights into the collaboration behind a film, what goes right—and what can go wrong. The Blu-ray presentation is strong enough to recommend the disc, as long as the buyer understands that the film itself has problems.