11:14 - 2003 * * * * 1/2

Fate can change in seconds.

The most peculiar thing happened to me the other day. I saw an advert for this unknown movie before another film I watched and I became desperate to see it. The day afterwards, browsing my local DVD shop I found the exact same film. Most bizarre.

Anyway, all I can do is echo Amazon reviews who ask how this film went undetected upon it's release and was not even released at the cinema! It is most odd how many gastly films come out at the pictures to worldwide release, when many of them are dire, and all the time films like this pass us by. I have probably missed many brilliant films because of this.

The start of the film didn't really blow me away, in fact I was thinking to myself that it had been a waste of time to put it on. Then it got interesting, and I mean really interesting, and I realised I had to watch it right through to the end. The film jumps backwards and forwards in time whilst re-telling the story of one night when a drunk driver hits a girl and leaves her for dead. We then go backwards to the events that happened beforehand, and find out that all the characters we assume we are seeing for the first time, have all been connected in some way to lead them up to this event and how if it wasn't for small individual mistakes that they each make,which at the time don't seem very important, then the whole situation would never have happened. I know my garbled explanation doesn't sound like much but I have not seen such a clever or better made film in a long time. There are elements of humour as well that I think are the director's way of poking fun at certain aspects of the film, such as having sex in a graveyard, and Hilary's Swank's hilariously goofy portrayal of a gas station assistant, who tries to make her friend shoot her in the arm so that she can stage a robbery. Rachel-Leigh Cook is suitably slutty in her role and successfully manages to juggle three men all at once hoping to make money out of them.

I always know when I have seen a great film by two things - sitting there afterwards going 'wow', over and over again, and constantly thinking about the movie for days to come. I did both with this one. Not to be missed.