Whenever a film is touted as the "next Pulp Fiction" it always makes my heart sink a little bit. It never does a film justice, particularly those that, not only are not in the same league as Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece, but don't even match up to the previous movies spawned in its wake. For every Go there is a Two Days In The Valley, so in the end, all you should ever really do is try to view a film its own right, rather than condemn its failure to match its inspirations. Perhaps then, it is fitting that newcomer-director Greg Marcks, who's only previous work was a short film about a man who reads to cigar-rollers, via radio, has created a tremendously entertaining if, at times, rather gruesome tale about five intertwining stories revolving around a couple of car crashes at 11:14pm.
Story one involves a young man who, obviously after intoxicating himself, attempts to drive himself home when, low and behold he hits what appeared to be a dear. After closer inspection it turns out that he has actually hit a fellow human, who is now dead as a possum. This incident, along with the other four stories, are not actually tales, but rather perspectives which, as the movie goes on, begin unravelling a narrative hidden from each of the other stories' characters, displaying how they are oblivious to the repercussions to which their misgivings seemingly affect others. Along the way there are some pretty nasty, although hilarious, gags involving such modern day taboos as fatal graveyard sex and a certain missing penis. You will squirm as you chuckle at the ensuing madness invoked upon our protagonists.
Where as hokey, silly riffraff like Snatch involved increasingly contrived story lines intertwining over a rather dubious narrative showed cheeky-chappy cockney gangsters smirk and dance their way through a music video of a movie, 11:14 manages to recapture the style and essence that made something like a Quentin Tarantino movie so effortlessly entertaining. What nobody cared to inform the duplicators of said director was that it was NOT swooshy camera moves, ridiculously quirky gangsters or even a decent soundtrack that made Reservoir Dogs the movie it was. It was a script. A script that was so funny, so original and so clever that you fell in love with it. 11:14 might not necessarily be a "lovable" movie, but it is constructed in a very clever sense, fooling its audience in a sense of doom, only to reveal itself later on to choruses of laughs. Marcks obviously understands how to strike a balance between humour and dread, as parts of this film had me clutching for breath, yet laughing all the same.
The cast do their up-most to fill in the gaps that may not make this as brilliant as some people have made it out to be. Most characters only serve the movie with around 15 minutes worth of screen time, so it is impressive that most of their scenes are packed with enough humour to keep you interested. Patrick Swayze's god-fearing father who is frantically trying to rid the body of his young daughter's lover is fairly impressive, but the daughter herself, played with wonderful faux-ditz and scheming nastiness by Rachel Leigh Cook, steals the show. You probably won't feel much for the clumsy nature of the characters, but they will certainly keep you on your toes.
Story one involves a young man who, obviously after intoxicating himself, attempts to drive himself home when, low and behold he hits what appeared to be a dear. After closer inspection it turns out that he has actually hit a fellow human, who is now dead as a possum. This incident, along with the other four stories, are not actually tales, but rather perspectives which, as the movie goes on, begin unravelling a narrative hidden from each of the other stories' characters, displaying how they are oblivious to the repercussions to which their misgivings seemingly affect others. Along the way there are some pretty nasty, although hilarious, gags involving such modern day taboos as fatal graveyard sex and a certain missing penis. You will squirm as you chuckle at the ensuing madness invoked upon our protagonists.
Where as hokey, silly riffraff like Snatch involved increasingly contrived story lines intertwining over a rather dubious narrative showed cheeky-chappy cockney gangsters smirk and dance their way through a music video of a movie, 11:14 manages to recapture the style and essence that made something like a Quentin Tarantino movie so effortlessly entertaining. What nobody cared to inform the duplicators of said director was that it was NOT swooshy camera moves, ridiculously quirky gangsters or even a decent soundtrack that made Reservoir Dogs the movie it was. It was a script. A script that was so funny, so original and so clever that you fell in love with it. 11:14 might not necessarily be a "lovable" movie, but it is constructed in a very clever sense, fooling its audience in a sense of doom, only to reveal itself later on to choruses of laughs. Marcks obviously understands how to strike a balance between humour and dread, as parts of this film had me clutching for breath, yet laughing all the same.
The cast do their up-most to fill in the gaps that may not make this as brilliant as some people have made it out to be. Most characters only serve the movie with around 15 minutes worth of screen time, so it is impressive that most of their scenes are packed with enough humour to keep you interested. Patrick Swayze's god-fearing father who is frantically trying to rid the body of his young daughter's lover is fairly impressive, but the daughter herself, played with wonderful faux-ditz and scheming nastiness by Rachel Leigh Cook, steals the show. You probably won't feel much for the clumsy nature of the characters, but they will certainly keep you on your toes.