Kevin J. McCorry’s short film, Ninety Seconds is a thrilling ride about a man, Robert, who’s been put in prison for murder. Robert’s daughter was raped and killed. There was a known sexual predator living next door. One thing led to another and now Robert’s been in jail for a year. In the film he’s visited in prison by O’Connor, a police officer who was working the case. and O’Connor confronts Robert with some very unpleasant facts.
On the surface, this is a film about two men who have fundamentally opposed views on a topic that goes right to the heart of what it means to live under the rule of law. Robert believes in the principle of ‘an eye for an eye,’ while O’Connor does not. In order to understand what’s really at stake in this very tense and powerful conversation, we’ll need take a step back in time. The idea of ‘an eye for an eye’ is quite ancient, dating back to the Code of Hammurabi. The way Robert understands it is that a man should be allowed to take vengeance on those who’ve wrong him. But is that what the code was really about? Pause for a moment and ask yourself – if someone caused you to lose an eye through some malicious act, would you want to remove the perpetrator’s eye? My guess is that deep down you’d want to do more. You might want to go as far as killing the other person. This is what the Code was addressing: the notion of ‘an eye for an eye’ was in fact an attempt to limit man’s natural desire to exact severe vengeance on those who’d wronged them. Because the truth is, when human beings set out to take revenge, they’re not usually content to get back what’s owed. They always want a little bit extra. Sometimes they want a lot extra and often they’re not thinking clearly enough to make the right decisions.
As society progressed, it quickly became clear human beings could not be trusted at all to make rational decisions about the target and kind of revenge that would be appropriate. So the principle that no man should be a judge in his won case became a fundamental rule of civilization.
In Ninety Seconds, O’Connor begins the dialogue and sounds like an eminently reasonable man. He pursues answers to questions and wants to do the right thing. He tries to convince Robert that what he’s done is wrong. But when we hear Robert’s side of the story, I think a lot of the audience, perhaps secretly and perhaps not, side with him. It makes sense that Robert shouldn’t take matters into his own hands, but knowing that he did is in some ways very satisfying. Robert may be in jail for the rest of his life, but, many will think, he might be happy with the transaction. The trouble with people who say, ‘if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,’ is that some people are willing to do the time. Robert, it seems, was willing to do the time. Does that mean he made the right decision? In O’Connor’s eyes, absolutely not.
McCorry presents these issues in such a way as to make us feel the whole gamut of emotions relating to this crime over the course of the seventeen minute film. We’re treated to fantastic performances by a very believable Timothy Fergusson as the raw nerve that is Robert and Gerry Grimes, the older and wiser man who must try to convince Robert that his actions were wrong. The story here is very simple. This is a film that is essentially two men talking. The performances go a long way to ensuring that we’re always on the edge of our seats. The simple but highly effective directing here also keeps us involved the whole time despite the entire scene being shot in one location. The location itself is not entirely believable as a prison, but it’s visually intriguing and it certainly feels like a prison even if it doesn’t look like one.
Overall this is a probing look into the darker reaches of human nature, and McCorry is able to plumb those depths masterfully. It only takes ninety seconds to take a child, Robert claims, and then there’s a lifetime of consequences. But as Robert learns, it only takes ninety seconds to make terrible decisions one will have to live with forever as well.
by: Darida Rose
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.