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I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

15 minutes was one of those movies I really enjoyed in a long time. It has a really good and compact script. Like Natural Born Killers which displayed how media becomes a greedy and sickening calling, 15 minutes kind of goes the same way, in how it glamorizes killers, where how they came from poor backgrounds, boo hoo, except these two Russian killers are just scum. How the movie plays out later on, I really liked, with some things you never saw coming, especially Deniro's turn of bad fate. Two Russian immigrants have come to America, with a plan, to document real murders, committed by them, where when they're caught, they will plead insanity. A high profile celebrity detective (De Niro acing a role as usual) and Burns as a fireman, team up together, after a fire consumes a whole building, that's work of the killers who were collecting n a debt, Burns too, making a bitter enemy with a mugger he handcuffed to a tree naked, prefore. The way the story goes is what makes this two hour flick, (a little longish) an electrifying thriller, where at the film ensues with a perfect shoot em' dead ending, we come to see the media for what they really are, especially ex friend of De Niro's here and media media magnate, played by Kelsey Grammar. It was good in how in the second half how Burns becomes the hero, where we solely relied on him to take this manipulative and psychotic two down, especially the really sick and much weaker one. Oh, I love this revenge moments. To, when De Niro, showing his rebelliousness and mettle, when made a hostage, spitting blood back in one of the faces, where his demise saddened and shocked. Truly riveting viewing here folks, don't miss these minutes of viewing.

I'd say a lot of the reviewers here focus too much on the 'message' of this film i.e. the idea that it's satirising the media's exploitation of violence blahblah. Thing is, the film never states anything about that directly; it's a thriller; and the first half (at least) is really well scripted and directed ,with great 3-dimensional characters, characters who speak to each other in a refreshingly likable way. One IMDb critic has stated, after seeing this film, that '...de Niro is now reduced to playing cardboard cut outs of himself...' What does that mean???? de Niro is an actor, playing different people - who exactly is 'himself'? Anyway, in 15 Minutes de Niro, with a bit of fire in his belly, does anything but a cardboard cut out of a Scorcese anti hero. He is mercurial in this role, and reminiscent of the detective he played in Midnight Run. I love it when de Niro plays a character you can trust, an ordinary but heroic man who does not have a psychopathic sting in the tail. He seems to take on a strange aura, in this role, being extremely watchable - as strange as it sounds, and maybe I am hallucinating here, he does on occasion have some vague John Wayne quality, and I would love to see him in a remake of e.g. Hondo!!! With a bloody good script, and good direction, this film seems to bring that something extra out of the great actor's performance.And inevitable this quality infects and lifts other aspects of the movie....

This movie starts out interestingly enough, but right from the start it suffers from Identity crisis. Who's the main character? Bad guys, good guys? Firemen? Police? It has split your attention 3 ways and it's not easy to enjoy from that mistake. Also, the film is supposed to be funny sometimes, and you think Deniro has a new sidekick. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it a cop movie? Or a news movie? Then before you know it, the character they spent the whole movie teaching you about:with details about his love life, his crime scene investigation, his history with the media, is dead. Not a good way to go 3/4 of a way through. If Titanic had detailed the lives of 5 characters on board the ship, killed of Jack before the boat went down, made the ice berg a character, and gone in so many directions it would have been a flop too. The producers new they had a flop on their hands, and they tried to fix it by releasing it late. Woops....did not work.

The hook that New Line Cinema is using to draw people into "15 Minutes" is that people are addicted to sensationalistic violence, and as one character puts it, "If it bleeds, it leads." The draw here is that there are two psychopaths who are using this known fact to bring themselves fame by documenting the gruesome murders that they commit and selling them to the media. While this is true, the social satire of the film is really only visible during the beginning and at the end. The bulk of the film is a standard order police procedural, but it's still engaging.Two immigrants, Emil (Karel Roden) and Oleg (Oleg Taktarov) have come to the United States to collect their share of a bank robbery they committed. When their cohort had spent their share of the loot, Emil kills him and the guy's girlfriend, while Oleg captures it on the camera he just stole. It doesn't take long before they realize the potential of filming their violent crimes. Hot on their trail are an alcoholic cop named Eddie Fleming (Robert DeNiro), who is the famed "pet" of tabloid guru Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammar, and arson investigator Jody Warsaw (Edward Burns).The film is a mixed bag. There are some good things about this film, and there are some that are awful. I'll give it credit for taking some chances and going in unexpected directions, but it also has some moments of jaw-dropping stupidity. And while there's some genuine tension in the film and the premise is interesting, I felt a little let down. Not only isn't the social satire original, it's not even effectively wedded into the main story. Also, I felt betrayed by the advertising of this film; I was expecting a cat-and-mouse type thriller between the cops and the criminals, and the media who is exploiting it. However, seeing as writer/director John Herzfeld wasn't trying to go for this angle (at least I hope not...), I can't really blame the film for this, just the studio.The acting is adequate. Eddie is a role that Robert DeNiro could do in his sleep. It doesn't require to stretch his range, but then again, DeNiro is still highly enjoyable to watch when he's not really trying, so it doesn't matter. Edward Burns seems a little out of his element, but his performance isn't a complete bust. The villains are the stars of the show. If you want a frighteningly psychopathic Russian villain, they don't come any better than Karl Roden. Emil is one nasty piece of work whose logic to his plan is frighteningly plausible. His counterpart, Oleg Takratov, isn't as smart and too starry-eyed by fame to be as dangerous as Emil, but he's not everything he seems to be. The part of Richard Hawkins deserves to be played in an over-the-top manner (is there any other way to play a Jerry Springer/Geraldo Rivera clone?), but Grammar doesn't go far enough to be truly vile, though I liked the fact that he gave Hawkins a small dose of humanity (whethere it was genuine or not is up for debate). Small parts by Melina Kanakaredes (who is wasted as Eddie's girlfriend), Vera Farmiga, and Charlize Theron (in a blink and you'll miss it appearance) are great.This isn't an especially bad film, but I don't know if there's enough good stuff to outweigh the bad.