The transformation of a schlepp

Russell Crowe slumps comfortably into the role of a junior college teacher in "The Next Three Days," and then morphs into an unlikely man of action determined to spring his wife from jail. The film might have been more convincing if he'd remained the schleppy English teacher throughout. Once glimmers of "Gladiator" begin to reveal themselves, a certain credibility is lost. The movie is a competent thriller, but maybe could have been more.

That's because the filmmaker is Paul Haggis, director of such powerful films as "Crash" and "In the Valley of Elah," and writer of "Million Dollar Baby." Here he's remaking a 2008 French film titled "Anything for Her," unseen by me. What he makes of it really doesn't seem worthy of his time, and the performances by Crowe and Elizabeth Banks could have been put to better use.

Crowe and Banks play John and Lara Brennan, a Pittsburgh couple with a young son, who see their world collapse in 24 hours. After a nice night out, their doors burst open the next morning, cops charge in, and Lara is hauled away on murder charges. John knows his wife did not — could not — commit the crime.

But the evidence is compelling: She has the opportunity, it appears she had the motive, and the blood on her coat matches the victim's. It looks bad.

John tries to continue teaching and raising their son. He's conventional, intelligent, settled. His wife's arrest and conviction has triggered a deep outrage. First he backs appeals to the sentence. When they all fail, he learns Lara will be transferred to the state penitentiary in three days. The deadline is dire, because he plans to break his wife out of the jail in which she's being held.

How do you, a bookish English teacher, go about doing that? The movie becomes a prison break procedural, and the steps John takes and the plans he makes are interesting, as such matters often are in the movies. How he transforms into a man capable of fulfilling them is sort of slipped in. He does them, ergo he could do them. He does a lot of online research, solicits advice from a man (Liam Neeson) who has broken out of a lot of prisons and descends into the Pittsburgh underworld to obtain a weapon.

English teachers are ordinarily not terrifically good at buying guns from dope dealers, and the deal doesn't go smoothly, shall we say. But by now, Russell Crowe the hero of "Master and Commander" has surfaced, almost on command. It's not his fault the role requires such a stretch. It's perfectly possible for ordinary people to cleverly break into and out of things, which they do all the time. But there's a requirement in the marketplace that there must be action scenes, Haggis supplies them, and Crowe rises to the occasion, as he must.