11:14 (2003)

This film depicts individual stories that lead to a horrific accident in a small town. In the post-Tarantino (Pulp Fiction specifically) age, films like 11:14 take what Tarantino did for storytelling and go the next step. What 11:14 lacks is Pulp Fiction's profundity, but the cleverness of the script and the reliance on its audience's intelligence are both strong qualities of this film. Indeed, although by the end of the film, I thought that the story amounted to nothing extraordinary, I nevertheless thought that this is the next step in playing with time and throwing a curveball to linear story construction. The performances are all strong, but there's nothing break-out. The characterizations are off-beat and mildly humorous though they lack depth -- a result of the film spending such a short amount of time with each person. Overall, it's clever and fun and worth watching even if 11:14 doesn't produce much more than a shrug by the final moment.