Grade: C-

Verdict: Andy Warhol would give it about 15 minutes.

Details: Starring Robert De Niro, Edward Burns and Kelsey Grammer. Directed by John Herzfeld. Rated R for extreme violence, nudity and language. Two hours.

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Review: The new Robert De Niro-Ed Burns flick “15 Minutes” goes off in 15 different directions. Ambitious? Certainly. Effective? Only occasionally.

Give the movie points for trying to say something. Unfortunately, what it's trying to say is along the lines of “media is bad.” “Media corrupts.” “Media is not your friend.”

Gosh, so that's what “Network” was about.

Essentially, “15 Minutes” isn't nearly as smart as it thinks it is. Watching it is like spending time with a know-it-all teenager; the kid isn't neccessarily wrong, but he's definitely irritating.

The picture's calling card is its cast: De Niro as a celebrity homicide detective, Burns as a hardworking arson investigator, Kelsey Grammer as a sleazy tabloid-TV host.

What brings them all together is a murder spree in Manhattan. The killers are a pair of Eastern Europeans, Emil (Karel Roden) and Oleg (Oleg Taktarov), who've come to America to collect their share of a bank robbery.

Unfortunately, it's been spent, and the two are so, well, disappointed that they brutally kill their former colleague and his wife. Oleg, who has a movie fetish (he tells people his name is Frank Capra), videotapes the whole thing. Then they burn the place to hide the crime. Which is how De Niro and Burns arrive on the scene.

Holed up in a fleabag hotel and fed a steady TV diet of Jerry, Sally and Maury, Emil has a moneymaking idea. Something about the justice system, the insanity plea and double jeopardy. “I love America,” he says with a grin. “Nobody is guilty.”

That's where Grammer comes in. The killers need the publicity and he's glad to supply it in exchange for exclusivity.

Writer/director John Herzfeld is like a film geek with a budget and a movie crew. He knows his movie references and he even goes so far as to get De Niro to parody his legendary “Are you talkin' to me?” scene from “Taxi Driver.” The combo of viciousness and dark humor is straight from the Quentin Tarantino school, and the thugs are like bloodstained variations on the characters in Jim Jarmusch's “Stranger Than Paradise.” Even the film's tagline, “America likes to watch,” is a reference to Peter Sellers' “I like to watch” mantra from “Being There.”

As for the blue-ribbon cast, De Niro goes through the motions with enough commitment and charisma to suggest he may be looking for a best supporting nomination next year (after all, Jack is one Oscar ahead of him).

Burns isn't much of an actor, but the camera just loves him — not in a pretty-boy way but in that it catches something interesting about him. You can't help but respond when he's onscreen. Meanwhile, Grammer struggles to give texture to a one-note cliché. The irony is, given the movie's anti-TV message, he gets much better material on “Frasier.”

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service