At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

A record-keeping bureaucrat has a peculiar hobby of collecting information on those rare people who share his birthday, February 29th. One day, just before he is supposed to leave on a train, he adds another person to his records and discovers he already has a person with that name... and birthdate.. and birth parents. Yet these are two different people! Perplexed, he starts casually investigating, only to be murdered that very night. And so begins a sequence of events that broadens into a wider and wider conspiracy. The plot of this film follows an extremely Hitchcockian development, where an innocent action entangles an everyman into a deep conspiracy. However, whereas Hitchcock would then use this kind of plot to squeeze out lots of suspense, the direction and screen writing in this film squander some potentially thrilling moments of deception. Without the suspense, this film feels overlong and lacking much danger -- a tamer version of the noirs and thrillers coming out of America, England and France at the same time. It's too bad, because in the right hands this could have been quite a fun film to watch.