11:14 (2003)

Starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Shawn Hatosy, Patrick Swayze, et al
Rated R, 86 minutes

Here's another one from the free-and-OnDemand files. This movie was under the Independent Film Channel's offerings. It was described as a black comedy where "5 intertwining stories intersect at exactly 11:14." I stopped reading there and clicked "watch."

Not sure this was a full blown black comedy, but it was alright. We start with a slightly drunk man driving home from a party, talking on his cell phone. A body comes from an overpass and smacks his windshield. Cops arrive and he eventually flees. A neighborhood woman condemns him for hitting his daughter with a car. But...he hit a man. So we flash backward to a vanful of young hooligans, who are the perpetrators in that murder. And it all unwinds (backwards) from there.

I don't know how this movie would work without the blurb I read, but there was built-in intrigue in figuring out how all the details would fit together. It was a little artificial, but it was there. I mean, what answers did you need to stick around for? Why was the guy in the first car drunk? Who was on the other end of the line? The mysteries weren't earth shattering, but your natural curiosity wants to see this movie through to the end.

***¼

"11:14" may not rock your world, but at under 90 minutes, I didn't feel cheated. You ignore a lot of the implausibilities because you accept it as an exercise in cleverly mixing the lives of five people. I did find some twisted laughs here. There were flashes of brilliance in the editing and shot composition. And as details from other threads paid off in later ones, I got more incentive to stay. But the stories lacked drama, and that was the biggest problem. But hey, Rachael Leigh Cook was hot in it. Eh? Eh?