I liked the idea (alas, it wasn’t original), and I’ve long had a fondness for Dennis Quaid, but otherwise there are more flaws than not here.

Quaid wakes up to discover he’s been murdered – only, he has a day or so until the deadly poison in his system actually fells him. Hopes of a peaceful passing are shattered when his estranged wife is bludgeoned to death in front of him, and he becomes the main suspect. Can he spend his last hours figuring out who killed her, her student lover, and himself?

Really, the twists just weren’t dramatic enough, I think: rather than “oooh, really!?” it was more “right. And?”. Asking us to believe Meg Ryan as an 18 year old (she was actually 27 here) really wasn’t a good idea!

What impressed me most about the movie was the slow fade of colour, so that the end – like the beginning – was in black and white. Which says a lot.