Nick of Time

No sooner has accountant Depp disembarked at the Los Angeles railway station than he's separated from his infant daughter and presented with a gun, a photograph and a schedule. If he hasn't killed the woman in the picture - Governor of California Marsha Mason - within the next 80 minutes, then he'll never see his child again. It's a nifty pretext for a nail-biting thriller, but even on this abbreviated timescale the movie nags at your credulity. Given that the conspiracy ripples out alarmingly wide, it seems improbable that head honcho Walken should have concocted quite such a whimsical plan, and it's a long wait before the impassive Depp takes any resolute action. Written by the prolific, old-fashioned Patrick Sheane Duncan, the film's passably ingenious, but director Badham fluffs its central gimmick, the notion that the action is played out, Rope-style, in real time, by cutting away from his hard-pressed protagonist at convenient intervals. Even so, it's not a bad effort. Badham's sub-De Palma, not Hitchcock, but he's still fractionally above average.