H-8

The camera wrings every inch out of the cramped setting. It's constantly moving back and forth, side to side, popping in and out of conversations like an other passenger. The breath-taking first ten minutes imbue the rest of the film with a Wages of Fear-esque tension and a sick inevitability.

The way the film develops each of the characters with just little bits of screen time is impressive, and it does a very good job of depicting the balance of life and death hanging by a thread, but it also can't stop itself from being heavy handed, particularly in its use of narration. Also, despite developing the characters well enough to be compelling, none of them are developed well enough to give the ending the kind of emotional impact it should have.

A decent practice in character development, but pretty much only reads of as a mechanism for that end, and not much else. The idea is to get you to feel compassionate for the characters that will inevitably, as you are aware from the beginning, die in a accident. This serves as the plot devise for demonstrating the hopes and dreams, pasts and anxieties of the bus and truck occupants. It's not much more than that though, and if your looking for 12 angry men level dialogue, go elsewhere.not bad