Matt Lee Witlock is the chief of police of a small costal Floridian town that has just made on of the biggest drug busts of all times, including a substantial amount of cash. But although Matt’s career just hit it big, his personal life isn’t doing as well. He has estranged from his wife who wants a divorce and found a new lover Ann who is also married but does not seem to be in as big of a hurry to get divorced. Their relationship mist be kept secret for a number of reasons not just because it is an affair but because it could hurt Matt’s job standing as well. But when Ann lets it be revealed to him that she has terminal cancer, Matt wants to do everything he can do to help. Ann’s husband took out a life insurance policy on her worth a million dollars but the problem is it does her no good to get the treatment she needs now, so she signs Matt on as the beneficiary to it trying to settle the claim while she is still alive but when that falls through she is out of hope. So Matt trying to help the woman he thinks he might love steals the drug bust money and gives it to Ann and tells he to meet him at his house. But when she does not show up things start to look fishy and it gets even worse as the next morning Ann’s house burns down and they think Ann and her husband were inside. Now, Matt is in deep trouble he has a limited time window to solve the case before he is charged with the murders and his whole world comes crashing down.

Sometimes its not the formula but instead the execution of the formula. Out of Time felt very formulaic to me like it was following some script that has been handed from producer to producer finding a reincarnation every few years. The plot had its little twists, the characters had their twists but from start to finish you pretty much knew where the movie was going, the only question left to answer was how they were going to get there. There’s nothing wrong with doing a formula type movie if you do it very well and keep your audiences wanting to know what’s going to happen next even though they most likely know what’s going to happen next. This movie did that, I was enthralled by the movie and spell bound at times simply because Denzel Washington captured me entirely with his performance and his execution of the formula. Washington has proved he is an amazing actor and that he can pull off nearly any part given to him and he has the ability to steal the screen from every other actor on it. You can almost do away with every other part in this movie because without Denzel the movie fails miserably. No I wasn’t utterly and totally blown away by the movie, like I said it felt like I have seen the movie before. But I was blown away by Denzel and he made the entire movie for me an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. Am I in any rush to see the movie again, no once more, but am I glad that I took the time to see it at least once, yes. And that is something that a lot of movies cannot have said about them.
3.5 stars out of 5