6/10
All roads leading to disaster
31 December 2006
Warning: Spoilers
***SPOILERS*** We see right from the start a number of people from different walks of life casually entering a trendy Toronto coffee shop for a drink or bite to eat. A car outside being chased by a police cruiser crashes into a parked van and the two men inside run into the café, and what looks like some kind of an altercation on their part, guns are pulled out. All of a sudden all hell breaks lose and what seems like about a dozen persons in the coffee shop end up massacred in the crossfire.

As you try to get your bearings at what you just saw we then see what seems like the morning 12 hours back in time as were slowly introduced to the very people who we've just seen being shot down. The movie then plays itself out for the next hour or so where were again brought back, or forward, in time to the same café. To have a replay of the shootout but with some major changes in those who are to be in it, and who's going to end up being shot. And most importantly the personal lives of the people both in and out of the café giving them all an emotional connection or tie-in with each other as well as us watching the film. We see in a number of unrelated scenes about the stories behind the people that are in that café and how them being there will change, or end, their lives forever.

There's the embezzling fund and money managing attorney Jack Maclean who had played with one of his clients, the late Mrs. Garrison, money and lost it in a number of failed real-estate ventures. And now has to face the music, and be disbarred or even worse, if he doesn't come up with the $200,000.00 he took from her by the end of the week. There's the story of the sad-sack and distort pest exterminator Brian who still hasn't gotten over the tragic death of his young daughter. And it's causing him to slowly withdraw from those he has any professional as well as social contact with.

There's the sweet and musically talented young student Jessica who's conned and talked into by her conniving friend Phoebe to blackmail her French professor the honorable Monsieur Farrin by concocting a false and spurious charge against him in that he looked up her skirt and even attempted to make a grab at her. This is all done not to get Prof. Farrin to give her a passing grade, Jessica in fact has the best grades in the class, but to pass Phoebe who has a very poor academic record. As well as her being on the verge of being expelled for failing the very important schools French exam. There's the middle-age and never married seamstress Sheena who's nervous about seeing a blind date that she's to meet that evening outside the café because of her previous experiences with men that she dated. Sheena's last few dates ended up with men who are more interested in themselves then with her.

There's also the young teenage Judy Garland look-alike Margaret who works at the café as a cashier and is at the same time trying to break into the theater whom her actress mom is one of it's bright and shining lights. And there's Margaret's friend Connie who also works behind the counter and is having troubles with her boyfriend Justin over her not spending more time with him. All these people together with the fugitive gambling den robbers Nick Kevin and their wheel-woman Nick's girlfriend Alice lives intersect at the café and are to be, in the first as well as second scenario of the event, linked to each other. Either for better or for worse but most of all for good.
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