Indeed, in the end we find out that Emmett Young is the mass murderer himself! How is this a possibility you might inquire? Well, he keeps noticing the tattoos on the young ladies instead of the young ladies themselves especially that one hot black haired young lady bartender he just keeps asking a lot of dumb questions without much noticing how gorgeous she is even though she clearly states to him that she is single. He also seems to ignore his pretty partner police officer but not in a gay kind of way, but more in the crazy kind of mass murdering way. See, the viewers are distracted from noticing Emmett Young's psychotic behavior in the end, because we are so deeply concerned about his ill health at the beginning. One gets the impression that perhaps the assassin trying to kill Emmett Young is the mass murderer because his place is a mess with lots of pornography. In comparison, Emmett's place is clean and wholesome. It is when the assassin is rummaging around Emmett's place that he finds evidence of him being the true mass murderer. At least, that is my interpretation.

Scott Wolf,(Emmett Young) gave an outstanding performance as a young detective who just starts on the police force and is an eager beaver to achieve his goal as an FBI agent in the future. However, Emmett is given some medical advice from this physician that greatly upsets him and throws him completely out of focus. His girlfriend, Sarah,(Sarah Clarke), "24" Nina Myers,'04 TV series, decides to leave him because he never spends any time with her and pays her very little attention. Despite all these personal problems, he has his mind set on a string of female killings and will stop at nothing in order to attempt to capture this serial killer. There is plenty of twists and turns in this mystery and it will keep you guessing just who the killer or killers are. Almost forgot, Khandi Alexander,(Detective Middlestat),CSI TV Series, was very hot and sexy looking as a forensic specialist/Detective.

1st watched 3/28/2004 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Keith Snyder): Unique but slow moving drama about a detective who is only given one week to live and hires someone to kill him so that he won't go out slowly. Another story within this central theme, is the serial killer that he's tracking down but we really don't get shown much of this side of the story. Scott Wolf does a good job in his role as the detective but when a twist in the story occurs and he decides he doesn't want to be killed, the movie just doesn't go anywhere. A very flat performance by Tim Roth in the role of the assassin doesn't help the story much, and Gabriel Byrne really doesn't do much with his role as the person Wolf works thru to get the killing done. All in all this was a good try at a different kind of thriller but there's not enough heart going into the making of this. There were some obvious small things like editing mistakes that made it clear that not a lot work was put into finishing this but instead it was just put on the movie shelves as soon as it could.

This is a very good movie by first time writer/director Keith Snyder about a Philadelphia homicide detective who hires a hit man to kill him because he thinks he's dying. The story plays against the background of a serial killer on the loose.Det. Emmett Young is told he has a week before he has to check himself into a hospital where he will surely die a painful death. While sitting in a restaurant having a cup of coffee and looking very depressed, a stranger approaches and tells the young detective that he was a cop once and things can't be all that bad. The two go and have a few drinks and Emmett tells him the truth, that he's going to die soon. Eventually the conversation gets around to what Emmett should do, and the man offers to find someone to kill him for $15,000, and after thinking it over, Emmett decides that's the best way to end it.The stranger isn't who he appears to be however. He isn't a retired FBI agent, he's a sleazy lawyer with a record for fraud, and he approaches an acquaintance to do the hit. The man is an ex-cop who killed a young detective once because he was jealous of losing a promotion to him - the sleazy lawyer got him off.About halfway through the film, Emmett learns there's been a mistake and he was given another patient's diagnosis - he only has a bad viral infection. Now the dilemma, how to find the guy who contracted his own hit and stop things from happening. I won't spoil the ending, but the plot takes a few twists and turns, and things don't turn out the way you think they will.The director scored a major coup by getting two excellent actors to play major roles in this movie. Gabriel Byrne plays the sleazy stranger who arranges the hit, and Tim Roth plays the ex-cop contracted to carry it out. Byrne is an underutilized actor who deserves more roles like this because he's very good. Tim Roth is the one who really stands out, however. He plays the dimwitted killer with dead eyes perfectly. The end scene when he finally confronts Emmett was excellent, and different.Scott Wolf plays Emmett Young, and though he looks more like a choir boy than a big city homicide detective, he handles the part well enough. The rest of the cast is unknowns but they carry the story along very well also.I never heard of this film when it came out last year, which is too bad because it's much better than a lot of the better known police dramas that got all the notice. Definitely a good one to rent and Keith Snyder is someone to watch in the future.