15 Minutes

15 Minutes is a movie in the style of Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Its greatest asset is the Czech actor Karel Roden, who brilliantly portrays the character of a deranged neurotic killer and criminal who does not solve his problems with his head but with a knife in his hand. He and Oleg Taktarov recreate the Mallory and Nickie duo of the Stone movie I mentioned. These two protagonists are rather hateful, but at the same time play the roles of icons, bearers and engineers of the idea of the movie. Unlike Stone’s work, where even those on the side of the law were exactly the same nut cases as the central pair of murderers, the evildoers in 15 Minutes find their opposition in truly American heroes with big guns and even bigger hearts. We keep our fingers crossed for them, as it is natural to do when we see such fights between good and evil – and that’s why we get a lot of slaps in the face, criticizing this consumerist and naïve, Hollywood cliché-riddled outlook. According to the movie, America, the “rules” for success in its entertainment industry and its entire legal system are all rotten and sick. What prevents the film from becoming something more than a bit of provocation is its genre vagary and slight internal contradiction. For a while, you are amused by the stupidity and naivety of a pair of European immigrants and then you are shocked by the brutality that takes place under the blade wielded by one in front of the other one’s camera. Later, you will fall in love with De Niro in the romantic scenes with his fiancée and then ... you will see for yourself. In short, 15 Minutes is a rather incoherent mix of contradictory emotions. It is questionable whether Herzfeld wanted to conceive his film in this way or whether the directorial conception of the project got out of hand. (04/06/2018)

Robert De Niro shows his career is going downhill, because he is taking roles in increasingly mediocre films, and 15 Minutes is no exception. Karel Roden overacts with gusto and maintains a comfortable distance next to the awful Edward Burns. (06/27/2002)

Quite suspenseful and a bit different than the usual thrillers mainly because it focuses on a pair of killers, not cops. Karel Roden is cool, Edward Burns is a prude, and all in all I found this to be a relaxing above average film. (10/08/2002)

15 minutes doesn’t work very well. The concept looked very promising, but John Herzfeld ruined it with his hasty and convulsive direction, which had such a negative impact that even if Robert De Niro and Karel Roden were walking on the ceiling, it probably wouldn't have helped. Those amateur camera flourishes started to annoy me to no end after a while. (01/17/2005)