"Out of Time" may be the last time Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. appeared purely as an actor. The Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role said in a recent interview, "I have been in the film for 25 years. Work has generated great interest." He said that his current goal is to be a successful director.
In last year’s directorial debut "Anthony Fischer", Washington has already shown his talents. Not only did the film in the first weekend average single-room Box Office second only to the "Lord of the Rings", it won The Motion Picture Association of America’s top 10 films of the year have also been given an A rating by the New York Times and Chicago Sun-Times .
This time, Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. claimed that one of the important reasons he chose to take over the film was the film’s director Karl Benjamin Franklin. They had previously successfully collaborated in the highly acclaimed and popular film "Devil in a Blue Dress" in 1995 . And Eva Mendes, one of the heroines of the film, is also an old partner in Washington. Do you still remember the hot wife of Detective Alorzo Harris in "Training Day" ? That's right, that's Mendes. This time, the 25-year-old girl will once again play the role of husband and wife with Washington.
Cooperating with a tacit partner is naturally important, but an undeniable fact is that of this film with a budget of 50 million dollars, 20 million of which are paid to Washington alone. This not only consolidated Washington's position as the number one black movie star, but also finally allowed him to join the "20 million club." The American film critics commented on this: "Denzel seems to have suffered from Oscar fever in the past, and he focused on playing the marginal figures who may be favored by the judges, such as the black slave soldier in "HONOR" (won the 62nd Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor ), the father of the dying child in "John Q" and the lawyer defending gays in Philadelphia , etc. Now, if the compensation is right, he doesn't seem to be so picky about the script. After all, 20 million is really a good price."
Spending a big price will naturally have high expectations. The distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. has high hopes for this movie. They hope this movie can become a trump card in the hands of the company. When the Box Office and reviews of the last two major production films "Hart's War" and "Rollerball" were not satisfactory, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. expressed a high degree of confidence in Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. When signing a $20 million contract with him, Washington had not even won his own Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. But it’s no wonder, after all, it’s the "John Q" starring Washington that defeated Walter Bruce Willis 's "Hart's War". In the first week of Box Office statistics, "John Q" was twice as high as the Box Office of "Hart's War". many.
In December 2002, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. once announced that the movie "Out of Time" would be released from May to June 2003, but the release date was finally postponed to early October. The two months of September and October are on the American film release schedule, which happens to be between the summer and holiday schedules. Therefore, the first weekend of October has always been the release day of major production films. Both "Red Dragon" in 2002 and "Three Kings" in 1999 were chosen to meet the audience at this time. The distributor of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. stated that there are two main reasons for the postponement of the film’s release date: “One is that the company hopes to further produce the film to improve the quality of the film, and the other is that it hopes to enable Denzel to survive the intense summer. Freed from the competition, leaving more time for his own films."
Critics commented on this: "Although to some extent, "Out of Time" is more like a mixture of "Body Heat" and "No Way Back" , but in view of director Carl Benjamin Franklin's long history of film trends Correctly grasping and Denzel Hayes Washington Jr.'s stable performance, maybe Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.'s expectations this time will not fail."
