(2003)
3
Derek Armstrong
11:14 is just another would-be hip story of intersecting lives separated by six degrees, the kind that has proliferated since Pulp Fiction. But the concept has become so cliché, and this particular incarnation so featherweight, that its only home was straight-to-video. Greg Marcks' script fulfills the essential criteria for this genre -- a nearly slapstick confluence of events, mordant humor, surprise character relationships, and not one, but two car crashes. It checks off all the boxes, even seeming in some ways like a thematic precursor to Paul Haggis' Crash (2005), but without all the strained social commentary. What 11:14 doesn't do is get an essential handle on it titular concept: time. Okay, so everything happens when the clock strikes 11:14 -- fine. But is there any reason the action leading up to it must be condensed into 25 minutes? Marcks' arbitrary clock-in time forces a ridiculous chain of events spanning considerable geography, when simply loosening his narrative constraints on the front end wouldn't have sacrificed a thing, but might have made the movie marginally plausible. There isn't a standout performance in the cast, though there may be a most memorable one -- Ben Foster, who has the dubious distinction of playing the improbable (and decidedly juvenile) John Wayne Bobbit role. What happens to him will be as much a mystery as why anything else in the movie happens, except that it had to for this person to be in this place at this time. Because there's no message at all, Marcks is engaged in a screenwriting parlor game, not a movie.
11:14 on AllMovie
11:14 (2003)
