2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY (63)

Directed by: John Herzfeld

Starring: James Spader, Danny Aiello, Eric Stoltz, Glenne Headly

The Pitch: The lives of various people - a supercool hitman, a suicidal film director, an Olympic ice-skater, a small-time hood, a soft-hearted cop - come together in unexpected ways.

Theo Sez: For all their virtues, old Hollywood movies - written by punchline-minded ex-journalists, and produced by down-to-earth philistines with zero tolerance for circumlocution - rarely feature the pure pleasure of parallel storylines gradually converging. It's more a modern conceit, reflecting the way movies have (to a large extent) taken over from novels as well as perhaps the way urban life works, people drifting on separate paths that occasionally, temporarily intersect - and, whatever the cause, it makes for deeply satisfying movies like this irresistible, if fairly conventional, ensemble piece. Characters are (inevitably) a little thin, the dialogue pleasant but unmemorable, and the sub-Tarantino procession of colourful tough guys and preening Hollywood types (a TRUE ROMANCE lite) gets tiresome fast ; yet the film never loses its fascination, not least because the interaction of several strands - all, apparently, of equal importance - makes it impossible to know who the "main" characters are supposed to be, and hence how the story is likely to turn out. In a way, when you think about it, this kind of structural gamesmanship probably works best for those jaded viewers who've seen too many movies ; perhaps the real reason old movies didn't do it is just because audiences could still be surprised by straightforward storytelling back then.