As his life hits rock bottom, Richie wants to end his life quietly but his attempt is interrupted by an urgent request from his sister to babysit her precocious daughter. So begins a madcap tour of Manhattan after dark, as uncle and niece find unexpected bonds in the unlikeliest of places.
Before I Disappear is ultimately hampered not by a messy plot but by bland characters who, for the most part, don't so much talk to each other as they monologue at each other.
Christensen can't settle on a satisfactory tone-mawkish one moment, menacing the next... His movie is so vehement about Richie's redemption that even its bumpy detours are dully predictable.
It's hard to take hectoring parent Emmy Rossum seriously, and there's too much troubling development tucked into a plot that already feels overextended. A surfeit of last-act explanations doesn't help either.
Christensen, who not only stars but writes, produces, and directs, does about a dozen things simultaneously that most movies can't get right individually.
"Before I Disappear" wears its big, aching heart on its sleeve with a sincerity so unwavering that it's borderline goofy. And in a film about a burnout bonding with a cute kid, that lack of self-awareness proves critical.
Throughout the movie, you have the feeling of being dragged along on an impromptu journey by a filmmaker who is traveling without the benefit of a GPS device.
