This can be heavy going at times. The complexity of who is and who isn't in on the scheme becomes a bit laborious and detracts from the tension. Although it does matter to be intriguing enough to enjoy as things move along with an economy of events. There are enough twists and turns to keep one interested as to who is involved but it is really overwritten.

That is to say that a few of the Characters motives have little time in this short Movie to play out and completely compose the story. All of the Acting is acceptable and right up to the end it is a rather tense situation, as most hostage Movies strive. It is just a little too full of itself to be fulfilling.

It's a pretty good nail-biter, but overall fails to nail down a completely satisfying wrap up as things get wild and quite muddled. This kind of stuff works much better on the page than on the screen. There have been a lot of Detective Fiction from the likes of Raymond Chandler to prove this time and again. This just tries to be a little too clever for a little Movie.

What started out as a planned easy robbery of a diner, proves to be far more complicated than the robbers ever imagined.

An impressive cast that features Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta and Michael Chiklis fail to liven up this dullard of a movie. A straight to DVD effort that fails to grasp the concept of getting tension from the one location scenario. If it's not the laughable British accents putting you off - or that Whitaker is actually only doing a cameo - it's that the twist and turns still go nowhere fast, serving only to make the hum-drum pacing even more irritable. Some nice photography is a bonus, and the action sequences, while not exciting, are competently staged. But all told it looks like the 15 day shoot that it was, a case of grabbing some name actors and hoping that they can make an intended tricksy screenplay work. It didn't. 4/10

But unfortunately as things unravel, the movie loses its touch. There are quite a few good actors in it (Chiklis, Reed to name a few) and they're trying their best. For a low budget movie this is fairly well shot too. Of course it's almost entirely one location (with a few exceptions) and you'll either like that or not.

For a low budget movie, it's always better to have a few, but interesting locations. So that's a positive side aspect, until you realize there could be more to it. The story, especially towards the end, loses its drive and motivation a bit and gets a little too tricky for its own good. Sometimes simpler is better, if well thought trough ...