The distinct setting for this darkly comic ramble is a snow-free Christmas in decadent LA, where an affluent young Century City entertainment attorney (Estevez) has just broken up with his wife of one year. Emotionally reeling through a City that Never Thinks, he's mistaken for a vagrant,... [More]

The distinct setting for this darkly comic ramble is a snow-free Christmas in decadent LA, where an affluent young Century City entertainment attorney (Estevez) has just broken up with his wife of one year. Emotionally reeling through a City that Never Thinks, he's mistaken for a vagrant, solicited as a male prostitute, brutalized by the fascistic cops, ripped off by strippers, mugged outside a police station, and generally put through the wringer over the next 24 hours. Estevez brings a great deal of sympathy to a selfish character who rightfully ought to grow progressively less likeable the more we get to know him. The plot's flippant preoccupation with recreational drugs seems like something out of the early 80s. For a similar urban nightmare, flavored with the East Coast rather than the West, see what befalls Griffin Dunne in AFTER HOURS. [Less]