Hours
Eric Heisserer
The story: Nolan (Paul Walker) is at a hospital in New Orleans with his pregnant wife Abigail (Genesis Rodriguez) when Hurricane Katrina hits. His newborn daughter is put on a ventilator and he is told to stay with her. But as the hours pass and the powerful storm wreaks havoc, the hospital is evacuated. It is up to Nolan to ensure that the machine keeps working so that she can live.

This is a low-budget high-concept film banking on the appeal of actor Paul Walker. But with the untimely death of the Fast And Furious star in a car accident in November last year, this slight work now has to bear the weight of being one of his final movies.
Walker does a decent job and reminds you that there is more to him than the good-looking guy who does the racing flicks. He brings an easy charm to the flashback scenes with his onscreen wife and then channels grief, anger and desperation when the going gets tough. And then for much of the film, he has no one else to play off except an unresponsive infant.
Unfortunately, the story is not the best vehicle for him.
Scriptwriter Eric Heisserer makes his directorial debut here and he does not have a good grasp of pacing. In fact, there is an odd lack of urgency at first and that does not bode well for a purported thriller.
He certainly does not make things easy for himself by largely confining the action to one room in an evacuated hospital and having the story hinge on keeping a machine working.
Of course, that seemingly straightforward task gets more and more complicated with each passing hour. First, the power goes out and Nolan has to manually wind up a battery that powers up the ventilator for only three minutes each time.
And then other obstacles gradually surface which he has to somehow overcome while running back to the room every few minutes.
As a writer, Heisserer’s credits include A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) and Final Destination 5 (2011) and this background makes its way into Hours as well – in the form of red herrings.
Whenever the movie threatens to take a turn into horror territory, courtesy of obvious musical cues, it always veers away and it starts to feel like a cheap tactic.
Fans of Walker could still find the movie worth watching as he pretty much carries the entire thing. But others might well end up watching the clock instead.
(ST)