Screenwriters are told that actors choose scripts by reading the first and last ten pages. If the role is any good, the character you meet in the first act evolves into someone else by the end of the film. Russell Crowe's character, John, takes that kind of journey.
Most know this movie is about a community college English teacher whose wife is accused of murdering her boss and is convicted as a result. Exhausting appeals, John, who believes in his wife's innocence despite
evidence to the contrary, decides to take matters into his own hands. To do so, he must navigate the netherworld of crime and become a student of you tube crime videos to become a criminal sharp enough to break his wife out of prison. Without the internet, where would we be?
The first act is a highly compressed, somewhat slow set up for John's criminal development. We see how happy John and Laura are, how devoted to their baby, then suddenly the police rush into their home and swoop up his wife. Life changes instantly. We are spared the trial and move into a few years later when the last appeal -- denied-- seals Laura's fate. Her suicide attempt motivates John into action. Tutored by the man with "a highly specialized skill set," Taken star Liam Neeson, John is warned about what he's going to have to do and and the kind of man he must be to pull this off.
I thought the movie was well done and quite thrilling with a lot of twists and turns. Yes, a few of the cinematic techniques are recognizable "tradecraft," that Haggis could have tried to spin a bit differently--movie buffs will instantly know what's happening during the airport chase--but still, he's done it well and the experience was no less suspenseful.
My only complaint is that Crowe doesn't emote much throughout the film, so you don't see a noticeable dramatic transformation in his character--say from a Clark Kent to a Superman, or from a kid brother Michael to a Godfather Michael Corleone. Russell Crowe has been in so many action movies that we all are used to him being a character that gets the job done. If it had been my choice, I would have cast a more unlikely actor, perhaps a Ryan Gosling, an actor for whom action or superhero status has not been the norm. Doing so would have made John's character evolution more impressive.
Even though the film relies on many of the standard suspense elements for this kind of film, The Next Three Days was highly entertaining and as fun to watch as The Town. For those curious about its remake status, it is based on the 2008 French film called Pour Elle, or Anything for Her, and is nearly a duplicate. I've seen the film and it's just as good as the remake.