The world is coming to an end at midnight. How would you spend your last night? With whom would you spend it? Would you behave? Would you break the rules? Would you be in a helping spirit, or every man for himself? What, at the end of the day, really matters?

These are the questions that wash over us as we take in "Last Night," a mordantly funny and shrewdly understated millennial fantasy from Don McKellar, a Canadian actor and writer ("The Red Violin") who is making his directing debut.

No reasons are offered for the apocalypse awaiting the characters whose lives overlap in "Last Night," but they have all made their peace with it. A 30-ish widower named Patrick (McKellar) puts in a token dinner appearance with his family but prefers to spend these last hours in solitude. Patrick's buddy Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) chooses to fulfill his every last sexual fantasy, using the Internet to round up willing participants. And Alex (Trent McMullen), a former schoolmate, elects to give his first, and last, concert hall recital during the final hour.

As Patrick returns home past roving gangs who are looking for cheap thrills, he meets a married woman named Sandra (Sandra Oh), who is trying without success to get back to her own home. Despite his own isolationist resolve, Patrick finds himself being drawn to the woman, who intends to commit suicide with her husband at the stroke of midnight.

For all the mayhem and violence spilling onto the streets, "Last Night" is a relatively polite speculation on human behavior in dire circumstances. Perhaps only in Canada would a gas company executive (touchingly played by David Cronenberg) methodically call each one of his customers to thank them for their business.

Not everyone is as well-mannered. Patrick's mother (the estimable Roberta Maxwell) tries to make him feel guilty about abandoning the family, while an elderly relative grumbles that some of the sympathy pouring out to children should be reserved for older folk such as herself, who have survived so much suffering.

Resolutely unsentimental to the not-so-bitter end, McKellar spikes his drama with memorably droll encounters. Chasing over to Craig's to see if he can borrow a car for Sandra, Patrick intrudes on one of his pal's trysts, a former French teacher of theirs (Genevieve Bujold), who gives the startled Patrick a pop language quiz. When Patrick presses his reluctant buddy for one of his cars, Craig relents grudgingly, saying, "I wanted to die a man with three cars."

The soundtrack is peppered with trashy bubble-gum hits as heard over the radio. Perhaps the most disturbing notion put forth by "Last Night" is the understanding that the potentates who rule the airwaves have so successfully robbed their listeners of choice, we may be forced to spend our final minutes on Earth listening to "Taking Care of Business."

Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times