Too Tired to Die
Good
title. Decent premise (guy has a dream about death as a beautiful woman, sees
woman periodically around town, then she tells him
he's going to die in 12 hours). Good acting (from Chunking Express'
Takeshi Kaneshiro in the lead, the usually one-note Mira Sorvino as Death and
Jeffrey Wright and Ben Gazzara in supporting roles). Unfortunately, the whole
is less than the sum of its parts. Seemingly not sure exactly what he wants to
say, first-time writer-director Wonsuk Chin meanders way too long on trivial
things. Our protagonist's prophetic dreams could stand to be much shorter, as
could conversations about Balzac. And it's a catastrophic misstep to have
Sorvino play a second role as a man (think Johnny Depp's dual roles in Before
Night Falls were jarring? This is worse). Still, during scenes like the
strange dinner party with Gazzara's aging artist and his hot young girlfriend
eyeing our doomed hero as if he were just another conceptual art piece, we get
a glimpse of the greatness that this film should have come closer to. It
screens with the short film "Fever Pitch" (not to be confused with
the Nick Hornby-scripted film), a sort-of documentary in which director and
self-described "obsesssive videographer" Willard Morgan chronicles
his attempt to show a short documentary to his idol Michael Moore. Amusing if
only to see