57 Seconds has Hutcherson as a tech blogger who sneaks backstage at health tech CEO Morgan Freeman's big keynote speech. When a gunman tries to kill him, Hutcherson pushes Freeman out of the way, but at the same time, picks up a ring that allows the user to jump back in time by 57 seconds. The catch is, the ring needs to recharge, so you can't chain a bunch of uses to go back any further. Hutcherson uses it though to make a lot of money gambling, and manipulate a young woman (Lovie Simone) into falling for him. Evil pharma billionaire Greg Germann now has Hutcherson on his radar, and he wants to know what his secret is, so he gives him a job, unbeknownst to him that Hutcherson has his own vendetta against Germann that this new job will allow him access to carry out his revenge. At some point, will Freeman want his ring back?
The premise of this sounds okay enough, but the practice... I don't know. The biggest issue for me was Lovie Simone's Jala character falling for Hutcherson, and the question of consent. In their first lovemaking session, every time she sees something in his room that turns her off, he uses the ring to go back and hide it. Then he uses it after she tells him what things she likes to go back and make it seem like he just knew organically that she liked those things. If he could read her mind, or installed cameras and microphones in her apartment, and used what he found through that to win her over, it wouldn't feel right, but somehow here it is? And to be fair, they do touch on that a bit when she learns about the ring, but she gets over it really quick. Beyond that, there were some parts that I liked. For example, Greg Germann is an actual evil billionaire, a concept I feel like we'd gotten away from in recent times. I don't want to give the movie too much credit for that though, because he's a pharma billionaire, and there's almost an alternative health element to Germann's character being bad that could be just as worse, but still, pharma billionaires are bad. And then we have Morgan Freeman. He's there, he's gone, he comes back, he goes again, and then he returns to end the movie. I guess if he's going to skid, no need to skid too long. The deciding factor for me is that this is on Pluto, which normally would be a selling point because it's free, but I don't know it's worth sitting through the volume of commercials Pluto has. Maybe if Tubi gets it.
We're almost 1400 posts in, and we finally have Morgan Freeman on here. In 2009, when we were two years in on this journey, Freeman was getting nominated for an Oscar for Invictus, a movie I thoroughly enjoyed, and the idea that 14 years later he'd be in a DTV flick like this was the furthest thing from my mind. But here we are, Morgy is in fact on said skids, and in looking at his bio, I think this started with 2015's Momentum, which also starred Olga Kurylenko, so by 2023 he'd been dabbling in the DTV world for some time. The thing is, he is still every bit the Morgan Freeman we know and love in this movie, which would be hard to manage, except the inclusion of Josh Hutcherson, who himself is newly on the skids, at least makes it easier. I think almost every scene Freeman has is with Hutcherson, so it all doesn't feel as out of place. I don't know if Freeman will have enough films to make the Hall of Fame, but he's sufficiently on the skids to have more than this one, so this won't be the last time we see him here.
This is also our first time featuring the Hutch, Josh Hutcherson, on here--I don't know if anyone calls him "the Hutch," but it sounds like a fun nickname for him, doesn't it? Anyway, as I mentioned above, the main thing he does for me is mitigate the awkwardness of Morgan Freeman starring in a DTV flick. I think where Hutcherson does well is living up to the material he's given, like The Kids Are All Right, he's totally believable as one of Annette Benning and Julianne Moore's teenage kids. This ain't that kind of material, and I think that's a different acting toolbox to sell us on something far-fetched that isn't as well developed. And to be fair, I don't even know to what extent Hutcherson wants to sell us on this movie. He had Five Nights at Freddy's come out a month after this, and I don't know the timeline of when he did one or the others, but I wonder if he signed onto this then got Freddy's and wished he hadn't. At least he got to act opposite Morgan Freeman, that would be a selling point for me too.
I wasn't the biggest Ally McBeal fan, but when it came out in the late-90s, it wasn't like the world was any kind of monoculture then--and I think the concept of a "monoculture" is a bit of a reductive way to look at the past--but a hit show on network TV at that time was a big enough deal that, even if I didn't watch it, I knew it existed and knew Greg Germann was on it. Unlike Freeman, who's an Oscar-winning actor and one of the best of his generation; or Hutcherson, who was part of a blockbuster franchise; Germann is a professional actor with a lot of credits on TV shows and in movies, and from time to time we see him in something like this. And unlike Hutcherson, who can find a Five Nights at Freddy's, or a Morgan Freeman who has awards and all-time classic movies to his credit, Germann needs to keep being that professional actor, so he's not mailing anything in, not mentally installing a new kitchen island with his paycheck, and I appreciated that from him here. We needed a villain, he was up to the task, and he delivered. I don't know if Greg Germann's performance is enough for you to sit through myriad Pluto ads to see it, but it is enough for anyone looking to cast him in their next project to say, "yeah, Germann will give us a good run, call his agent."
Finally, I guess there's the question of, "Matt, what would you do if you could go back in time by 57 seconds?" I think I'd be too afraid to use it. Maybe the gambling thing, but like we see in this film, casinos will throw you out if you win too much. And even that scares me too much, I don't want to mess with Time at all. Like if I watch a roulette ball land on a spot, then go back in time 57 seconds and bet on it, what other eventualities am I changing with this new reality I've created? And just the idea of Time as this thing that can go backwards and forwards, thinking of that alone gives me a popsicle headache, forget actually doing it! No, if I found that ring, I'd give it back to Morgan Freeman and go about my life.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Pluto here in the States, but I don't know if it's worth dealing with the volume of commercials they have. If it ever makes it to Tubi, and you want to see Morgan Freeman on the skids, it might be worth it. As far as the podcast episode, you can check that out in the archives, episode 228, "Morgy on the Skids."
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18083578
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