The title of 15 Minutes can only refer to Andy Warhol’s famous pronouncement, made in the Sixties, that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”. He was prescient enough to discern that, as American mass culture burgeoned, fame would become an end in itself, and that it would no longer matter what one was famous for; indeed, he pioneered the idea of making people famous for simply being themselves. In today’s world of Oprah and Jerry Springer, fame lasting at least 15 minutes can be bestowed on anyone brave enough to confess their crimes (or at least their misfortunes) on prime-time television.
This is the world in which 15 Minutes exists. Kelsey Grammer (so familiar as Frasier, which makes this good casting) is the host of a trashy tabloid-TV show. Robert de Niro is a New York policeman who has become a regular on that and other shows, a celebrity cop who appears to manipulate the media to his own ends. Edward Burns is a younger and more idealistic arson investigator who joins forces with De Niro’s cop to probe a horrible crime. And Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov are two freelance Eastern European criminals cutting a swathe through the land of the free, filming themselves as they go and counting on the culture of confession to endow them with fame even as it holds out the promise of freedom from the consequences of their actions.
Written and directed by John Herzfeld, 15 Minutes is a tense, well-made thriller that never flags or falters and doesn’t sacrifice realism on the altar of effect. You can really believe in these people and what they are doing, which also points to the superb performances delivered by all concerned. It’s a pity, though, that in terms of its underlying thesis the movie couldn’t come up with any conclusions more complex than the conservative ones about how the media compromise themselves and get in the way of crime-fighting, and that criminals clearly have too much leeway to manipulate the system. There is no counterpoint to Grammer’s amoral anchorman, except perhaps the underdeveloped role of another television reporter, who seems to have more integrity, but the script is content to treat the media as if they were one undifferentiated corrupt mess.
Still, 15 Minutes is a compelling movie, and it’s worth it for Charlize Theron alone — she’s only in the movie for a few minutes, but she makes use of her South African past in a way that makes the local viewer laugh with surprise.