Life or Something Like It - Plot

Lanie Kerrigan (Angelina Jolie), a successful reporter for a Seattle television station, interviews a self-proclaimed prophet, Jack (Tony Shalhoub), to find out if he really can predict football scores. Instead, Prophet Jack not only predicts the football score, and that it will hail the next day, but also that Lanie will die in seven days, on the following Thursday. When his first two prophecies come true, Lanie panics and again meets with Jack to ask for another prophecy to test him again. Jack tells her that there will be a relatively significant earthquake in San Francisco at 9:06 am, which also happens. Now Lanie is convinced that she is going to die and is forced to reevaluate her life.

Lanie tries to find consolation in her famous baseball player boyfriend Cal Cooper (Christian Kane), and in her family, but there is little there. Her lifelong ambition, that of appearing on network television, begins to look like a distant dream. In her desperation, she commits professional blunders, but ends up finding support in an unlikely source: her archenemy, the cameraman Pete Scanlon (Edward Burns), with whom she once had casual sex. He introduces her to a new approach to life; to live every moment of her life and to do whatever she always wanted to do. Lanie moves in with Pete for a day, and he introduces her to his son Tommy (Jesse James Rutherford), who lives with his mother, and they spend a whole day together with Tommy. That night they sleep together for the second time. The next day Lanie receives an opportunity for a job she always dreamed of in New York. She asks Pete to come with her, but he declines telling her that her appetite for success and fame will never end. Sadly, Lanie leaves for New York.

Pete meets Jack and tells him how wrong he is, as Lanie got the job which Jack foretold she would not get. But Jack explains that he was right as Lanie will never be able to get the job as she'll die before it begins. He also gives a prophecy of the death of a famous former baseball player in a plane crash. When Pete receives the news of the death of the baseball player, as foretold by Jack, he tries to call Lanie to warn her but can't reach her so he flies to New York.

Lanie - unconcerned with Jack's prophecy - interviews her idol, famous media personality Deborah Connors (Stockard Channing). Lanie realizes how petty the opening questions are and shares a heartfelt moment with Deborah live on air. The interview receives huge ratings. The network immediately offers her a position, but Lanie declines, realizing that she wants a life with Pete in Seattle.

As she leaves the studio, a police officer gets into a conflict with a man, who shoots a bullet into the air. Pete tries to warn Lanie from across the street, but she is shot in the crossfire. Lanie dies in the operating theatre but is revived. When she wakes up, Pete tells her that he has loved her since the first time he saw her, and Lanie says she loves him too. Later, Pete, Lanie and Tommy watch Cal's baseball game, while Lanie (in a voiceover) says that one part of her has died — the part which didn't know how to live a life.

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