My review was written in October 1988 after watching the film on Curtin International video cassette.
In "One Minute to Midnight" debuting filmmaker Lawrence Curtin exorcises some personal demons but fails to connect his autobiographical story with the viewer. Pic played briefly on its home turf in Florida last January.
Curtin's fictionalized life story revolves around his marital predicaments: first wife, portrayed here largely offscreen (yet cryptically she is the occasional narrator, giving film an inverted point-of-view), supposedly took him for all his money and keeps hounding him unscrupulously for child support he's already paid.
In Florida, Curtin goes on a secret government drug enforcement mission to Colombia and ends up with a job selling outdoor advertising. He romances and weds Bo (Diane Coyne), but by film's end she's suing him for divorce after catching him with another woman.
Bo's family are religious fanatics, and though Curtin satirizes this sort of behavior he also posits a spiritual revival as saving him from the abyss, represented rather clumsily in a clock-ticking finale of himself about to shoot a bullet in his brain with one minute till the witching hour.
Crammed with too many incidents for a low-low-budgeter, the film is fitfully interesting but overstays its welcome. In filmmaking debut, Curtin, brother of actress Jane Curtin, falls into the common trap of trying to cram everything into the stew-pot. Climax of him dragged off to a mental hospital for three days (purportedly, his threat of a lawsuit brought the film end money from the hospital, enabling the picture to be completed!) lacks force due to distended presentation of earlier subplots.
As his own leading man, Curtin displays an ingenuous, flippant attitude giving the tortured film a blessedly light tone. Supporting cast is adequate, as is direction by Robert Michael Ingria, who previously helmed the dissimilar wrestling film "Hammerhead Jones". Curtin's script treats most situations like tv sketches, with quick and dirty technical credits to match.
In "One Minute to Midnight" debuting filmmaker Lawrence Curtin exorcises some personal demons but fails to connect his autobiographical story with the viewer. Pic played briefly on its home turf in Florida last January.
Curtin's fictionalized life story revolves around his marital predicaments: first wife, portrayed here largely offscreen (yet cryptically she is the occasional narrator, giving film an inverted point-of-view), supposedly took him for all his money and keeps hounding him unscrupulously for child support he's already paid.
In Florida, Curtin goes on a secret government drug enforcement mission to Colombia and ends up with a job selling outdoor advertising. He romances and weds Bo (Diane Coyne), but by film's end she's suing him for divorce after catching him with another woman.
Bo's family are religious fanatics, and though Curtin satirizes this sort of behavior he also posits a spiritual revival as saving him from the abyss, represented rather clumsily in a clock-ticking finale of himself about to shoot a bullet in his brain with one minute till the witching hour.
Crammed with too many incidents for a low-low-budgeter, the film is fitfully interesting but overstays its welcome. In filmmaking debut, Curtin, brother of actress Jane Curtin, falls into the common trap of trying to cram everything into the stew-pot. Climax of him dragged off to a mental hospital for three days (purportedly, his threat of a lawsuit brought the film end money from the hospital, enabling the picture to be completed!) lacks force due to distended presentation of earlier subplots.
As his own leading man, Curtin displays an ingenuous, flippant attitude giving the tortured film a blessedly light tone. Supporting cast is adequate, as is direction by Robert Michael Ingria, who previously helmed the dissimilar wrestling film "Hammerhead Jones". Curtin's script treats most situations like tv sketches, with quick and dirty technical credits to match.
