Nick of Time is a 1995 thriller directed by John Badham and starring Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken. Gene Watson (Depp) is an accountant arriving at an LA train station with his daughter. A group of punk skaters begin to harass Watson’s daughter and he retaliates physically. Seeing this, two people in suits, Smith and Jones (Roma Maffia, Christopher Walken). The two suits capture Watson and his daughter and inform Watson that they need him to assassinate the governor of California or they will kill his daughter. Watson attempts to contact the police several times but is headed off every time. Eventually, he decides to try and complete the act but uncovers a deeply woven conspiracy along the way.
Starting with the good, the acting was excellent. Obviously Johnny Depp was incredible and Christopher Walken was amazing, but Charles S. Dutton also chips in with a great supporting role as a disabled war veteran who helps out Gene Watson. The rest of the acting is decent enough not to distract from the plot.
That’s where the good ends. The plot is borderline ridiculous and is held together by a various loose web of sensible characters. It makes almost no sense that two “agents” would recruit a man to kill a government official based on seeing him punch out a teenager in a train station. The series of events that prevent Watson from being caught are just impossible.
The filmmaking itself is very dull. The tone of the film is very gray despite the action-packed nature of the story and the editing doesn’t really match the feel of the scenes.
While I love Depp, Walken, and Dutton, Nick of Time is nothing more than an after thought in their careers. It would have been far more interesting had the sitting governor of California been Schwarzenegger at the time. Nick of Time gets a 5.5/10.
Slackin.