Movie Review: 'Last Three Days' is a Shabby Little Time Travel Thriller

Last Three Days is a low rent bit of action-fantasy nonsense. This time travel cop fantasy toys with time so much that it becomes impossible to follow if you aren’t paying careful attention to it. And, because none of the performances are particularly compelling, attention is not something this movie will be paid. Because this is an obnoxiously amateur in production, Last Three Days is a blur of boring dialogue and dull characters amid a misguided and confounding plot.

Last Three Days stars the wooden Robert Palmer Watkins as Jack, a newbie detective on some nondescript California Police squad. Alongside his equally inept and dull partner, Dave, Jack is getting a super-fast education in Training Day style undercover police work. Meanwhile, as Jack chases his detective bona fides, his wife, Beth (Deborah Lee Smith) suffers at home, alone, in silence. That is until Jack forgets their anniversary in favor of yet another night of detective bonding.

Jack and Beth were college sweethearts who met at nondescript university and blandly fell in love over their favorite study spot, a tree with the best shade on campus. The two shared a love of C.S Lewis and his description of the four kinds of love, agape, love of mankind, storge, love of children and parents, philia, love for friends and equals and eros, erotic or passionate love. The movie returns to this scene of the two studying the four kinds of love more than once because someone apparently mistook this studying for depth.

The plot kicks in when Dave decides to battle a local Asian gang known as the Yaku. I assume they are called the Yaku because Yakuza is trademarked or something, who knows. The Yaku are entering the drug trade in town for the first time and Dave believes they can infiltrate them right from the start if they play it right. But, is Dave trying to stop the Yaku or actually join them and take their money?

Poor Jack is left to wonder about his partner's motivations after he gets slipped a mickey in the form of a new street drug being peddled by the Yaku. The drug causes Jack to sleep for three days until he starts having memories rush back showing him what he’s actually been doing for the last three days. Dave is dead and Beth was kidnapped and now he must find a way to get her back from the Yaku.

Or, Jack can wait for the drug to really kick in and send him back in time. Yes, somehow this new street drug is also a time traveling device that allows Jack to go back a day and then two days in order to set right what once went wrong when his partner was murdered and his wife was taken. But can he overcome Dave’s treachery and his wife’s growing ambivalence toward him due to his lack of attention.

I have given much more order to Last Three Days than actually exists in the movie. The movie plot is far more jumbled and clumsy. The film stumbles repeatedly over the time travel plot nonsense with only Jack’s watch and phone to provide a semblance of coherence. Jack’s busted phone plays the same role as the photo in Back to the Future. When the phone isn’t broken, Jack can still change the future. When it is broken, he’s in the present and time is set.

I think…

Last Three Days is so clumsy, convoluted, and amateurish that I probably missed something important that might have helped make this plot make more sense. Unfortunately, the movie is just too boring for me to give it my full attention. The performances in Last Three Days are bland and forgettable and the time travel and action are just a mess. There is nothing to grab onto in Last Three Days, nothing I can point to as enjoyable or even pleasant.

Last Three Days is available via most video on demand streaming services on November 13th.