Before We Go

When you decide to double up and jump behind the camera for the first time as well as star in front of it, then you need a great deal more than charm to get by. Sadly no-one told actor Chris Evans aka Captain America that and so he and his pretty and talented star Alice Eve try to make light of a dullish uninspired script that made heavy going on the night that they get trapped together in New York.

Evans plays Nick a trumpet player who, although on the edge of his big break, is busking in Grand Central Station when Brooke (played by Eve) almost trips over him as she rushes to try to catch the last train home. She not only misses it but as it is now the early hours of the morning, the station is closing up and everyone is asked to leave. She’s lost her purse and broken her cellphone and he is penniless so when they do start talking to each the most they can offer to each other are words. There are plenty of them from this very talkative pair, except about what they are really up too and are very short on details, so we have to spend a long night with them as they drip feed their stories to each other.

He was on his way to a friend’s wedding reception but bailed as he didn’t want to run into his ex girlfriend there as she had recently broke up with him when he tried to propose. Brooke on the other hand is an art buyer who had just closed on a good deal and her husband is away on business but he had announced that he was heading home early and so may find the note she left for him that she now regrets writing.

They have a whole series of escapades that night like trying to recover her stolen purse from a rough Chinatown mob, going to visit a Psychic and even singing a duet together when they are mistaken as entertainers when they crash a wedding. However mostly it is all leading up to the big $64 question i.e. will they end up together before sunrise. Ninety minutes is a long time to wait for that especially when it seems like the whole thing is played out in real time, so frankly we really do not care that much one way or another by the end.

It’s a shame as they are both talented actors, and cute to boot too, but it ends up as bad date movie for anyone wanting to have a bad date.