30 Minutes Or Less

30 Minutes or Less is the titular promise of the pizza place that average-achiever Nick (Eisenberg - The Social Network) works for. When Dwayne & Travis (McBride & Swardson - Eastbound and Down & Happy Madison films) decide to hire someone to kill Dwayne's overbearing father who is frittering away his lottery winnings and as Dwayne sees it - his inheritance. Needing to raise cash for the venture, they decide to force someone to rob a bank for them - by strapping a bomb to the victim and threatening to blow it up unless they comply.

Nick is left with little choice other than to go through with the plan, assisted by his long-time best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari - Observe And Report) who despite his initial reluctance, gets fully into the act. Will the guys manage to raise & deliver the cash before Dwayne & Travis' ineptitude blows the bomb?

Well, anyone would have thought this theme might have been a little insensitive as very similar events to these actually happened to a pizza-guy - but controversy aside - this is director Ruben Fleischer & Jesse Eisenberg's second outing together; the first being the hugely successful Zombieland.

What follows is actually not half-bad; Ansari's highly-strung character provides a lot of the laughs as Eisenberg comes across as a neurotic (probably due to the fact the character is wearing a bomb-vest) but it's his usual rendition of an anaemic-snivelling-loser. McBride & Swardson provide a lot of humour as the bungling day-dreaming duo, again it's not outside of anyone's comfort zone and all of these lot run the risk of being heavily type-cast. Michael Peña (Everything Must Go) makes an appearance as the hapless hitman. Nonetheless this provides slap-stick after one-liner for nearly an hour and a half straight, which is something that should be valued. Sure, it's brainless - but it's a lot of fun along the way.

Extra Content: There is the usual suite of deleted scenes & out-takes, a 'making-of' featurette called "Blowing up with the cast & crew" - The BR comes with more exclusive content; a picture-in-picture running-commentary with the main characters, another featurette & an exclusive 30 Minutes or Less PS3 wallpaper/theme thingy.

All in all, it's a bit slapstick, you'll laugh, but not for any length of time; fortunately the jokes don't let up and I came away smiling. Worth a watch!!

I seem to recall seeing the trailer for this and thinking it looked kind of funny. Jesse Eisenberg plays his typically geeky and hard done by character once again; this time he's a pizza delivery boy who gets tricked into robbing a bank by two local idiots who somehow know how to strap a bomb-vest around him and give him ten hours to get them one hundred thousand dollars.

I quite liked the idea, but the story didn't seem to know what it was or where it was going. I think the main problem I had with it was the script. In the absence of anything either funny or clever to say, the writers went for volume. There was barely a line delivered at a normal pitch. People just yelled at each other to make up for the fact that no witty dialogue was available at the time.

I guess if you look at this film as more of a tongue-in-cheek thriller, you may get something out of it. However, it's not serious enough to be a thriller and it's definitely not funny enough to be a comedy. Drama maybe? I can hardly see it cropping up on many Academy Award nomination lists.

I did laugh once - about midway through the film and thanks to some unexpected blue stuff.

I guess Jesse's laughs are being stored for Zombieland 2 or something.

Disappointing. It was a nice idea that had no idea.

This is one top quality film. Really good laughs, a brilliant story, with twists and all that extra flavours.

There are moments where they drop a line so perfectly that you have to question what the motive of film is. The reason. It is sort of bordering on being serious and damn right ridiculous. Jumping around with witty remarks and surreal events. It does so well, and is entertainment at its finest.