One of the charms of being a DVD critic is finding the underrated treasures of the year, those films that never made a dent in their theatrical runs, but were mostly just victims of bad marketing or awful timing. In my experience, everything rises to the surface eventually. Quality films ignored by the masses at the multiplex turn into cult hits on DVD and finding those hidden gems can be a great experience. It's happened to all of us. You see a movie on the DVD shelf and something about the cast or story hits you in the right way that you decide to give it a chance even though you haven't heard of it. Sometimes it becomes one of your favorite movies of the year. But just as often, all of that eye-catching potential on the DVD store shelf can fall flat and make it clear that it's not always the studio or the marketing team that messes up a film's potential. Sometimes it's the creators themselves. On paper, most notably the paper in the DVD case that will attract your attention, First Snow should be a winner. When it's over, you'll understand why you hadn't heard of it before now.

First Snow features a great cast including the always-excellent Guy Pearce and two of the best character actors of the last two decades, William Fichtner (Prison Break) and J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man). Throw in the gorgeous Piper Perabo as the female lead and the cast alone should have gotten the film a wider respect when it was first released. There's a reason all four of them are on the DVD cover. They're the main draw. The set-up for the story is pretty excellent too. Pearce plays Jimmy Starks, a successful salesman who breaks down in the middle of nowhere. While killing time during the repair of his car, Jimmy spends some time with a psychic (J.K. Simmons). The psychic tells him a couple of things and then has a clearly terrifying vision. He gives him his money back and asks him to go. When the first few things he was told come true, Jimmy starts to worry about the vision and returns to the scene of the mental crime. He's then told that he'll be dead soon, but he's safe until the first snow.

What would you do if you knew your time was limited? Would you make the most of it? Or would you panic and try and turn the hand of fate? Jimmy takes the latter route, thinking that he can dodge the impending bullet. Naturally, he becomes incredibly paranoid, convinced that everyone in his life could be the one to take him out. When he learns that his former business partner, one who took the bullet and went to jail for some bad dealings with Jimmy, has been paroled, the paranoia reaches a whole new level. And as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

As you can tell, the ideas behind First Snow are great, but the film is shockingly static and, pardon the pun, cold. First Snow feels twice as long as its 102 minute running time. We watch Jimmy go over the same roads again and again and writer/director Mark Fergus confuses building tension slowly with letting all the rising action drain out of a piece. Scenes go on for ridiculous lengths, as if the writers came up with a great idea and knew how it had to end but were merely killing time in between. Some deep readings of the film might conclude that we're all just killing time in between birth and death and that changing fate is more difficult than you might imagine. Kill time a different way than watching First Snow.