THE NEXT THREE DAYS

It sure looks like what happens here is that Elizabeth Banks is convicted for a murder she didn’t commit and that when all legal options run out, with a few years gone by and her child slipping away from her and no conjugal visits allowed and a life sentence stretched out ahead of her, her husband Russell Crowe (Robin Hood) decides to bust her out of the Pittsburgh prison and initiates a series of complicated preparations that involve crafting a big Beautiful Mind-style wall chart and procuring fake passports and busting up a meth lab to steal a bag of cash and teaching himself to break into a car with a youtube how-to and using apps and finally carrying out the plan in a tense, no-room-for-error dance in which the breathless pair switch clothes and vehicles and on an impossibly tight schedule try to evade the law, grab their kid, and make it to the airport one step ahead of being put on the no-fly list and escape to a tropical haven and be free forever.

But of course, there is no prison. The need for cash, the bank-robbing fantasies, putting the house on the market, the elaborate plans and calendars and maps, the GPS, the apps, the packing-up to go, the close shaves and slices of luck, the running to make train and plane—this is a straight-up tale of everyday American parenthood. Prison=being busy as fuck. That’s why the turning point is when they realize, mid-escape, that they may be obliged to leave their kid behind, and she suddenly tries to jump free of their speeding car, and he pulls over and with the clock thundering away they sit by the side of the road together, in perfect stillness, for the first time, thinking why are we doing this if we’re missing the whole point. And then when they go back to get him what’s the biggest mistake Crowe’s made? He misread the children’s birthday-party invite, it’s not at the house but at the zoo. And the greatest moment: Crowe recovers their son at last and the mother gets out of the car to embrace him and he sees her and reels in her pure blonde immanence. How I sob!…I don’t care, let ‘em look.

The cops are great, reconstructing what happened: “This guy’s a teacher?” says the detective, of Crowe. And his partner: “At a community college.” Hey, what the fuck? That means he’s detail-oriented and dogged and can perform when it’s called for, and man, that’s saying a lot.