Bum Rap

A struggling New York City actor/cab driver is diagnosed with a rare blood disease on the day after his 30th birthday and told he has precisely 72 hours left to live. It's an intriguing premise but, unfortunately, the poor man does nothing original in his final three days of life. He rages against God, gets falling down drunk, enjoys one last game of poker with the guys, one last reconciliation with his parents, and one last fling with an accommodating hooker (who of course has a heart of gold). Daniel Irom's original screenplay succeeds in walking a delicate line between humor and horror through the evening after cabby Craig Wasson first learns of his terminal illness, but after that he comes to grips with his mortality all too quickly and the film is left with nowhere to go. It's all meant to provide an affirmation of life, but all the optimism is forced, and worse: the hero's amateur acting instincts take over in his final hours, prompting him to declaim all the appropriate passages from Shakespeare and Chekov before, mercifully, collapsing dead.