Twenty five year old Justin Chatwin plays Nick Powell, a disaffected and newly graduated high school student who desperately yearns against the wishes of his mother to become a writer. His dreams of escape from a sterile and privileged suburban existence are smashed by the misfortune of crossing local gang boss Annie Newton, played by runway model waif Margarita Levieva. She's established as a real gangster deal by dressing collar up, completely in black and with toque and hood indoors or out. That a dynamite fashion sense and 3" pocket knife are the only requirements to convince her underworld don't mess with Annie as she stands down felons, carjackers, cops and other undesirables twice her size plus through the force of her glare tells you where this is going. As we're informed repeatedly, "that girl's out of control".
Through a series of coincidences, misunderstandings and betrayals Annie comes to believe against all reason Nick ratted her out to the police and launches a relationship transforming them both by hitting him with a car, inflicting grievous bodily harm with a baseball bat and discarding his mostly dead body into a sewer inexplicably located in a forest. The rest of the film follows Nick's disembodied quest to influence the living around him into finding his failing body before 'mostly' becomes 'all'. The plot becomes less probable from that point forward. After the car chases, shootouts, police pursuits, bird ghosts and Annie's lifting of a sewer grate without tools, when the final redemption arrives and both Nick and Annie are transformed - signaled in Annie's case by the now freed flaxen locks and pastel Flashdance attire - you'll either be fighting back tears or regretting Annie wasn't batting 300 in the forest.
Most frustrating is catching glimpses of the intriguing and much superior original source material - a Swedish novel and movie - through the thick morass of stock clichés and repugnant TV morality. (The movie justifies Annie's streak of theft, assault, extortion and attempted murder with a cold father figure.) I suggest tracking those down before wasting a minute here.
Through a series of coincidences, misunderstandings and betrayals Annie comes to believe against all reason Nick ratted her out to the police and launches a relationship transforming them both by hitting him with a car, inflicting grievous bodily harm with a baseball bat and discarding his mostly dead body into a sewer inexplicably located in a forest. The rest of the film follows Nick's disembodied quest to influence the living around him into finding his failing body before 'mostly' becomes 'all'. The plot becomes less probable from that point forward. After the car chases, shootouts, police pursuits, bird ghosts and Annie's lifting of a sewer grate without tools, when the final redemption arrives and both Nick and Annie are transformed - signaled in Annie's case by the now freed flaxen locks and pastel Flashdance attire - you'll either be fighting back tears or regretting Annie wasn't batting 300 in the forest.
Most frustrating is catching glimpses of the intriguing and much superior original source material - a Swedish novel and movie - through the thick morass of stock clichés and repugnant TV morality. (The movie justifies Annie's streak of theft, assault, extortion and attempted murder with a cold father figure.) I suggest tracking those down before wasting a minute here.