A random shooting in an LA County diner reverberates through the lives of the traumatised survivors in this solemn, multi-strand drama. The ensemble cast features Forest Whitaker as a cancer-riddled gambling addict who finds that his brush with death gives him a sudden streak of luck at the casino. He's joined by Dakota Fanning's sullen-faced born-again Christian; a peroxide-blonde waitress (Kate Beckinsale) who neglects her toddler son as she tries to deal with events; and Guy Pearce's doctor, who decides - for reasons largely unclear - to start poisoning his wife. Handled with leaden faux gravitas, the soap opera lathers well but quickly evaporates as heavy-handed metaphors and misty-eyed sincerity take their toll. No worthy successor to its obvious inspiration, the Oscar-winning Crash and its fractured LA stories, this offering begins with a gunshot's bang but quickly descends into a long, misery-fixated whimper.

A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.