The movie's plot is basically every paranoid person's worst nightmare. Elizabeth Banks plays a woman accused of a murder she claims she didn't commit, and is thrown in prison for life, leaving her husband (Russell Crowe) to raise their young son on his own. Naturally, this is all very hard on all three of them, and when she attempts suicide in the joint, Crowe avows that he's going to go on the internet and learn how to transform into Chev Chelios overnight and bust her ass out of prison in an implausible, sure, but actually pretty easy to swallow in context plan. What follows is some very fun and tightly suspenseful action sequences that not even the presence of Olivia Wilde could ruin (though she did try her damndest!).

After a hilariously accented cameo from Liam Neeson (I think he was going for Brooklyn? By way of Ihavenoideaville?), who plays an authority on breaking out of prison -- which is a thing in this movie -- and a lot of scenes of Crowe furiously scribbling things down while watching YouTube videos of how to break into cars and cut industrial phone lines, the crazy shit starts happening. Bullets are flying, cars are spinning out of control, cops are running down all the hallways, a meth lab catches on fire, Crowe starts just shooting dudes, it's crazy. And once he does break Banks out of custody (not a spoiler since it was in the trailer, sorry) they go on the run in some well-made chase sequences that were so good they reminded me of The Fugitive, and not in a cheap imitation way. He gets a little too good at badassery a little too quickly, but it's a movie -- sometimes that's necessary, and it's certainly more entertaining than watching an average guy fumble around with a gun and be really ineffectual for two hours.

You could say the movie's flawed by a lack of character development in both Crowe and Banks, but that actually didn't bother me. It's true that we never get to know either person very well, but that's because we're watching a movie entirely about a guy with a severe case of tunnel vision. He's got important shit to do; he can't be sitting around on a first date with us all movie telling us about his favorite color and crap. Plus, once you casually set a meth lab on fire and then go home and take a catnap, I pretty much know all I need to know about you anyway.

Did you see The Next Three Days? Tell us what you thought about it in the comments, then see our list of the greatest jailbreak movies ever!