All that in eight minutes? Shutdown of a key operation, a kidnapping, and character turn-arounds that may cause you to break your neck? 80% of the third season of “24” never had this much action in the course of eight minutes. The most you could get out of eight minutes during the early parts of the third season was Jack Bauer sitting on the crapper, but they didn’t show that.
Combining certain elements of “24” (the digital time on the bottom of the screen right in the middle, editing that’s reminiscent of “The Thomas Crown Affair” and other films, though it’s better handled) and a love of Star Wars is a fine way to go in making a fan film, especially because I suspected someone would come upon “24” sooner or later and decide that was the way to go. But in the course of eight minutes, there are a lot of questionable motives among a group of Star Wars fans, jockeying to get tickets online for Episode III as soon as they become available. But a mole in the midst of their group, Darcy (Deborah Abbott), doesn’t want that to happen and it’s only too fortuitous that she’s the head of all computer operations, conveniently freezing all systems just as the tickets go on sale. What’s a bunch of dedicated Star Wars fans (including John-John, who’s too dedicated to Jar-Jar Binks) to do now?
Russ (Russ Watson), the head of this group, decides to call Jake (Paul Villamil), who gave up on Star Wars when Episode I came out and reminds Russ of this, though is convinced to go get the tickets anyway. From here on out, “Lord of the Rings” is cleverly referenced and “24” is skewed to the point where I bet that if the creators of the show saw “8 Minutes”, they’d wish that they didn’t have to keep “24” so realistic. “8 Minutes” ranks up there with the Star Wars fan films that guarantee a good time.
