Stuart Dempsey is not having a good day. He is moving from Ohio for a low-level job at The New York Globe and, while on the train, he borrows part of another passenger's copy of the Globe to look for an apartment. A strange man sits down next to him. The lights go out. When they come back on, the men are gone--along with Stuart's luggage. When Stuart tries to use his ATM card, he is told he has no bank account. He goes to the paper at the time he was supposed to meet Mr. Beringer. But Mr. Beringer is out to lunch at the time Stuart was to be interviewed (Stuart doesn't have the appropriate clothes). Or is he? The door is open and there he is, eating. But Mr. Beringer says the office is closed. Then he realizes he is speaking to Stuart Dempsey. Well, in that case ...
Stuart gets a great deal on a sublet. The catch is that he might have to move out if Jason comes back. It's a nice place, but things are about to get complicated. When Stuart dates Jason's girlfriend Daphne, people assume he is Jason. Some of these people have Russian accents and aren't very nice. Eventually, Stuart sees a chance to become a reporter, because Jason is supposedly a bureaucrat. Where did he get the money and why are these people after him? And why do the people Stuart met when he got to town keep disappearing? Stuart gets himself in a lot of trouble, and while his problems are funny at first, later the movie gets quite serious.
The best thing about this movie may have been the music. In the first half and at the very end, the music was real jazz or at least influenced by real jazz, with harmonica and piano the main instruments. Unfortunately, most of the music in the second half was forgettable new age with synthesizer.
We are not told a lot of details until we have to know them. There is a lot of mystery in this movie, and even at the end I wasn't sure I knew everything. It was okay, but nothing that great. There were a couple of standout performers. One was the actor playing a janitor and computer whiz known as 'The Source', who was able to explain a lot of Stuart's problems. The end had a lot of excitement and was very hard to follow, and it had the best acting performance of the whole movie ...
SPOILERS FOLLOW! ... that of the real Jason.
'The Source' told Stuart that the real Stuart Dempsey died as a child.
Beringer was not Beringer. He kept showing up wherever Stuart was and updating someone by cell phone. The real Beringer was in his office one day and he had no idea who Stuart was.
The mystery men from the train showed up about halfway through the movie to cause problems for Stuart.
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