Clint Eastwood directs and stars as a grizzled journalist with just 12 hours to prove a prisoner on San Quentin's death row is innocent in this solid adaptation of Andrew Klavan's anti-capital punishment novel. Alternately tautly gripping and ridiculously facile, this suspense thriller at times resembles a big-budget episode of Murder, She Wrote with its hokey plot contrivances and clues undiscovered by the police instantly found by Eastwood. Yet it retains its "beat the clock" shape mainly because the superstar director accents character issues and details above the mechanics of the whodunnit material. Driven by a rich vein of sympathetic humanity, Eastwood turns in one of the most thoughtful and perceptive performances of his career.

Boozer, skirt chaser, careless father. You could create your own list of reporter Steve Everett's faults but there's no time. A San Quentin Death Row prisoner is slated to die at midnight – a man Everett has suddenly realized is innocent.