A kitchen-sink drama in the most literal sense, Dinner Rush serves as a sort of ultra-light, Olive Garden version of Gosford Park, another class-conscious ensemble film rife with illicit plotting and punctuated by a murder nobody seems particularly concerned with solving. Director Bob Giraldi's not-so-eagerly anticipated follow-up to the 1987 Jon Cryer-in-high-school comedy Hiding Out, Dinner Rush stars Danny Aiello as an old-fashioned restaurant owner whose partner is murdered by mobsters just as the business begins to attract a more upscale clientele. Taking place almost entirely over the course of one eventful night, Dinner Rush flits back and forth between the interrelated but sharply contrasting worlds of the restaurant's wealthy, appearance-conscious customers and the gritty, frenetic, hand-to-mouth existences of its working-class waitstaff. Packing a soap-opera season's worth of subplots into 98 tight minutes, Dinner Rush juggles its story threads with impressive dexterity and narrative economy, seldom overreaching until the climax, which all-too-tidily ties up the loose ends. As the calm figure in the middle of the restaurant's storm, Aiello lends his usual effortless authority to a thankless role, and he's nicely augmented by sharp supporting turns from Mark Margolis as an acerbic critic, Summer Phoenix as a zoned-out waitress, and Edoardo Ballerini as Aiello's arrogant son. The generally clever and well-structured script, written by first-timers Rick Shaughnessy and Brian S. Kalata, contains its share of clumsy exposition and groan-inducing lines, but Giraldi keeps the film moving so briskly and efficiently that it never slows down long enough to become boring. He has an Altman-esque ability to create memorable characters out of just a few lines of dialogue, and though Dinner Rush's abundant style obscures a shortage of substance, the film boasts enough charm and energy to maintain interest right up to its too-pat conclusion.