Driving by his deep will of celebrating with the birthday of his daughter, an unemployed father, struggles against overcoming the obstacles he faces in his way to his daughter, where he struggles against the traffic jam, that forces him to leave his car in the street, but it is not the end of the problems.
At first comes across like a mean-spirited black comedy and then snowballs into a reasonably powerful portrait of social alienation. The tone is unremittingly dour, however.
A heavy-handed potboiler, but as it raises the temperature, it does give cause to consider the line--so easily crossed--between social function and disasterous personal undoing. [Blu-ray]
A real artist could make something incisive or darkly hilarious out of this moral tightrope act. Schumacher, veering recklessly between social satire, kick-ass fantasy and damsel-in-distress melodrama, plays the game for opportunistic cheap thrills.
None of the characters ever rises beyond the level of his or her generic functions, and by the end the overall emptiness of the conception becomes fully apparent.
