This is one of the most suspenseful movies you'll ever see, but that good for only viewing. After you've seen it, the impact is greatly lost for further viewings.

It got panned by many critics for having too far-fetched a storyline, and I agree. However, if you can put your brain on "hold" for 90 minutes, you'll enjoy the movie. The only annoying part for me was the typical Liberal bias in here where the Liberal politician is the target of a Conservative fanatic. They never show you the other way around. At least the writers here were somewhat subtle.

As interesting the characters as Johnny Depp usually plays, the two villains in here were more fun to watch than him. Christopher Walken and Roma Maffia were riveting as the killers. Depp actually played a normal person, which is not normal for him.

The suspense was so good, I could hardly watch parts of this. That was the best part of the movie. The worst may have been the so-overplayed cliché of the killers hesitating before shooting and then, because of that, being shot themselves. That is so tiresome. Or sometimes the crooks talk instead of shoot, and then are shot. It's one of critic Robert Ebert's biggest pet peeves and I agree with him. It's another reason this film got low grades by most critics.

However, this "real time" movie (trying to get the viewer even more involved),is guaranteed, if you've never seen it, to give you an entertaining hour-and-a-half.

Johnny Depp continued his interesting streak (preceded by "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", "Ed Wood" and "Don Juan DeMarco") with "Nick of Time". He plays accountant Gene Watson, whose daughter gets kidnapped. The kidnappers (Christopher Walken and Roma Maffia) give him a envelope and tell him to murder the person on the photo within the next hour and 15 minutes or his daughter dies. It raises the stakes when it turns out that they want him to assassinate the governor (Marsha Mason),and there's a conspiracy at work.

I will admit that this movie isn't really anything special, but happening in real time heightens the suspense. Also starring Charles S. Dutton.

Nick of Time has a rather novel concept of taking place in real time some years before the TV series 24 made this its central conceit.

Johnny Depp plays an everyman accountant whose young daughter is kidnapped by villainous Christopher Walken and ordered to kill the Governor of California or else his daughter will die.

Walken gives him a gun and a time limit of 90 minutes and it has to be done when the Governor is giving a speech in a hotel.

Depp in an unusual role playing a normal guy has to keep his wits about him and try to find help but Walken and his cronies are watching his every move. Depp still manages to unravel a conspiracy.

The film may have a preposterous plot, surely there are easier ways to kill the Governor but the film kicks in quickly and director John Badham clearly brings a Hitchcockian sheen to the film. You seem the time motif regularly in the film and an increasingly frantic Depp as time goes on.