11:14

In 2003, a movie simply called 11:14 was released, written and directed by Greg Marcks. Most notable stars are Hilary Swank and Patrick Swayze. This is a wannabe interesting film, but it only has one exception to all others like it, and I'm not saying that it's an improvement.

In the last twenty years, a small niche of films have decided to take the rigid structure of a typical movie and turn it on its head. These movies take several story lines that seem to have nothing in common and connect them by the slimmest of margins to complete the film. The most popular of these include Magnolia and Crash. 11:14 is the same style of movie. Everybody in the movie is connected, even if some of the main characters never see most of the others. This particular type of movie can be very effective in some cases, but at its worst can just be repetitive. I for one love noir movies if they are done well, and this is a type of style that has a small following tracing it too. Noir lasted just shy of twenty years before it became completely cliche and out of vogue with audiences. This style, I believe, is already out of vogue, even though very few have been made.

There is no reason for me to try to explain the plot. I'd just end up retelling the movie. Instead, all I'll say is like all other movies of this type, there involves dead bodies (usually the same one or two that keep popping up, which makes it seem like more), all the events happen around 11:14 pm, and there are moments that make the viewer go "Oh!! I've seen that before! I think I know what's about to happen!" And I find that sad. Once you get into the rhythm of the movie, then it starts to get predictable. Another element which could be positive or negative is the dark humor. I love dark humor as much as the next person (well, maybe more), but I find the dark humor in this movie forced and not natural. It seems to me that this movie isn't sure if it's trying to be a serious movie with all the coincidental factors coming into play or if it's trying to be a satire of that type of movie style.

On the whole, I wasn't a big fan of this one, even though I was really excited about it. I just couldn't like it as much as I wanted to. But that's just me. Unlike Magnolia, or even Memento, this movie doesn't mess with your mind. It's rather straight-forward. In fact, just when I thought "I wonder what happened to the guy from the beginning?".... he showed back up, which neatly wraps it all together with a little bow on it. It may be worth a viewing, but I don't recommend putting too much effort in finding it.

Here is a link to the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-g6uIyFvow