Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

blanche-2 After a fashion, I really enjoyed this miniseries from 2004, "Five Days to Midnight," starring Timothy Hutton, Randy Quaid, Kari Matchett, Hamish Linklater, Angus Macfayden, and Gage Golightly.Hutton plays physics professor J.T. Neumeyer who, while visiting his wife's grave on the anniversary of her death, finds a briefcase with his name on it. Inside are news clippings that talk about his death five days from now. At first, he thinks it's a joke but ultimately believes it was sent by his brilliant but eccentric student Carl (Linklater) and perhaps is not a joke. With an 11-year-old daughter to care for, Neumeyer isn't about to go down without a fight.Complications abound, including a secret his girlfriend (Matchett) has been keeping, and his brother-in-law's financial difficulties. Then there's the implication of actually changing the future - which Carl warns him can't happen.Quantum physics is extremely interesting to me -- parallel universes and the like, time travel - unfortunately, there was not as much emphasis on this in the plot; instead, the focus seemed to be on making it into a detective story. Less interesting.My big problem was the way the discs were set up. I watched the first disc, returned it to Netflix, got the second, and immediately realized I hadn't seen one episode. I found out I wasn't the only one this happened to - the discs separate the episodes, one hour each, rather than one episode, two hours.Timothy Huttton was excellent, and all the acting was good - Hamish Linklater is always wonderful -- and all of the acting is good. Because of Hutton, you really get involved in the story and in this man's plight.If you watch this, you'll have questions - there is an excellent post on the message board that explains it all.Can we change the future, and if we do, what are the implications? Are the past, the present, and the future occurring at the same time? If we try to change it, are we doomed to the same fate even if the circumstances change? Movies have been asking these questions for years. "Five Days to Midnight" also deals with the future sending us messages. It's all fascinating -- I just wish there had been more of it.

Claudio Carvalho While visiting the graveyard of his beloved wife with his daughter Jesse (Gage Golightly), the physics professor John T. Neumeyer (Timothy Hutton) finds a case with a police dossier relating his death in five days. He initially believes it is a sick prank from the brilliant but deranged physics student Carl Axelrod (Hamish Linklater), but when a series of events related in the documents occur, he realizes that the file has been sent from the future. With the support of Detective Irwin Sikorski (Randy Quaid), whose name is indicated in the file as in charge of the investigation of his death, and suspecting of everybody including his girlfriend Claudia Whitney (Kari Matchett) that has a blurred hidden past, J.T. tries to change the future and his fate. But Carl believes that any modification in the time-line will jeopardize mankind and the future of the planet."Five Days to Midnight" is a good mini-series with a quite original story that blends action, thriller, sci-fi and drama in an intriguing way. Unfortunately the plot has the usual holes and flaws relative to time-travel. For example, if Jesse sent the dossier from the future, why not write a note to her father asking him to keep the open mind and explaining the whole situation? This would be the simpler and most rational way to advise J. T. Neumeyer how to prevent his death and eliminate his list of suspects. Therefore there is a great incoherence in the plot. In Brazil, the DVD was edited and released with 148 minutes running time, in a regretful but usual procedure of the Brazilian distributors. The mutilated edition destroys the original work of the director and writer, and the viewer loses many references along the story. Anyway I found that the weak climax of the plot could be improved by the writer since this mini-series has a great premise and deserved a better conclusion and resolution. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Cinco Dias Para a Morte" ("Five Days To the Death")

chrichtonsworld This mini-series has quite some good moments. Some of the ideas are interesting and promising. The concept reminded me of "D.O.A." with Dennis Quaid. Sadly this show has got nothing in common with that wonderful movie. The murder mystery is not as exciting as I hoped it to be. The "changing the future theme" does add some depth to the mystery. And is the main reason why this show is interesting enough. If this concept hadn't been in this show than I wouldn't even had bothered watching this. When this concept presents itself you want to know how and why it is possible. Preventing death of the main character was something that didn't seem to matter much to me. The idea to give somebody a way to do it was more intriguing. The much anticipated climax is therefore completely unsatisfying. No decent or reasonable explanation is given of events. The loose ends don't get tied up. And the big question (the time travel concept) doesn't get answered at all. Maybe I could have forgiven the ending if the show had more to offer. A show with a premise like this has to have more twists and turns than it did. Or more comic relief or action to offer some light entertainment. At least something that would have taken my mind of the initial mystery. But the slow pace and lack of real suspense kills of everything that could have made the show really thrilling. The only thing that deserves special mention is the way they portrayed the relationship between the father (Timothy Hutton) and daughter (Gage Golightly; dead ringer for Drew Barrymore when she was little). It was very nice to see. Other than this there is nothing worth watching. Avoid this!

Li-1 Rating: ** out of ****The two-hour Sci-Fi Channel made-for-TV movies may almost always suck, but you can usually rely on their miniseries for quality acting, writing, and special effects (I loved Taken and Children of Dune, really liked Dune, and there is nothing currently on TV that can compete with the new Battlestar Galactica). Five Days to Midnight breaks the channel's success streak, proving to be easily its worst miniseries to date. 5DTM stars Timothy Hutton as J.T. Neumeyer, a physics professor with a young daughter (I forget the actress's name, but she looks a lot like a young Drew Barrymore) and a life insurance agent named Claudia for a girlfriend (Kari Matchett). While visiting his late wife's grave on a Monday morning, his daughter discovers a briefcase nearby. Upon opening the case, J.T. is a little shocked to discover that the contents are files pertaining to his own murder, which will occur in five days, at 3:55 A.M. on Friday.He initially laughs it off as a hoax, but when a few of the little "prophecies" come true, he becomes a fast believer and sets out to find out who would murder him and why. He has only a few clues, but there is a list of suspects: Carl Axelrod, an eccentric student of his; Brad, his financially desperate brother-in-law; Roy Bremmer, a man he's never even heard of; and even his own girlfriend Claudia, who is not all that she appears to be. With the clock ticking down and only the help of a homicide investigator (Randy Quaid), J.T.'s obsession with saving his own life may come at the cost of many others.Undeniably, 5DTM boasts one of the niftier premises in recent memory. Playing like a mix of Minority Report meets 24, the combination of sci-fi and mystery has always appealed to me, so there's no question that a good portion of the miniseries is genuinely engaging and entertaining (mostly in the beginning and middle segments). A lot of the series is intentionally predictable, and in a fun way, like you just know that gift from his girlfriend will be the same parka he wears in that photo from the briefcase where he's lying dead, or the car his girlfriend rented will be that green Cherokee in that other photo, and so on and so forth. 5DTM also has fun with the implications of possible time travel and the changes one could set forth in the fabric of time. I was also thankful for the fact that a lot of the characters actually caught on to the possibility of time travel quickly and even accepted it without much question.There are a lot of decent to good performances, especially Timothy Hutton, who capably handles the functions of a likable everyman. The girl who plays his daughter is terrific as well, and Kari Matchett would be a dead-on match for Naomi Watts if she had a smaller nose and slightly larger cheeks. Angus Macfadyen makes for a menacing villain as Bremmer, who's so evil he clearly can't be Neumeyer's killer.Unfortunately, the miniseries begins to stumble by the second half of 'Day 4,' and is just a complete and utter mess by 'Day 5.' The writers can't seem to be able to keep much consistency in the film's concept of time travel. Without giving much away, when certain changes are made to the timeline in the film's climax, newspaper articles and photos from the future are also altered to fit the new timeline (kind of like in Back to the Future), and the changes occur immediately. However, in 'Day 2,' Neumeyer changes a woman's fate, preventing her from getting killed by a collapsing tree. After this change in time, his daughter then reads all the newspaper articles from the file the next day, which still state that the woman died because of the tree. Wouldn't that portion of the article have been altered?The climax is just terrible (moderate spoilers in this paragraph), with every major suspect conveniently converging in the same location with murder on their minds. Just as bad, at least three of the potential killers wouldn't have even targeted Neumeyer if not for the intervention of the briefcase itself, and the one suspect that continuously threatens his life also seems most likely to the deed, but a tacked-on, idiotic surprise revelation completely disregards that possibility, placing the blame firmly on one of the characters that wouldn't have killed him if not for the briefcase's intervention. I can't think of any plausible reason this person would have killed Neumeyer prior to the appearance of the briefcase, but a bullet that conveniently fits into a gun is supposed to lead us to believe it was this one character all along.The identity of the killer is perfectly predictable, since it's always the person we're least likely meant to suspect. Even though I came to the realization very early, I still doubted myself because, as stated earlier, there's just no reason this person would have any true motivation to kill Neumeyer without the briefcase.It's unfortunate, but with such an awful ending, I just can't go out of my way to recommend 5DTM. It's not the movie's only major flaw, the miniseries is constantly padded to fill its allotted running time, and the director goes insanely overboard on the choppy slow motion, often ruining any developing suspense or momentum. Had the miniseries been about forty-five minutes to an hour shorter, I might have said yes as a video rental, but unless if you've got lots of time to kill, this isn't rewarding enough to spend the time and money.