Another random video store pick turned out to be an interesting evening's entertainment, fulfilling this author's love of an unconventional plot with some good acting, a bit of dark humor and a little bit of gore thrown in.

11:14 begins with a body falling from an expressway bridge on to a car at approximately 11.14. At exactly the same time, further down the road, a van with three young hoodlum-types inside hits a girl. Through a series of flashbacks concerning several different groups of dysfunctional types, we learn how these two car accidents and all the characters involved are related.

The film stars Patrick Swayze, Hillary Swank, Barbera Hershey, Rachel Leigh Cook and Tom Hank's son, Colin. In general the acting is very good, and as a Brit, the characters come across as very small town American, slightly cliched, maybe, but fun nonetheless. Swayze is the stressed father of Cook's Cheri, a girl looking for money to afford an abortion, Swank is Buzzy, the nastily-toothed convenience store assistant who lets herself get cajoled into helping stage a hold up, Hanks the leader of three delinquents out to cause trouble, one of whom will end up missing an important part of his anatomy. Probably my favorite character was Clark Gregg as the police officer Hannagan, who had some great lines, particularly concerning the aforementioned missing body part.

The film's strong point is its plot - several seemingly unrelated events (all of them darkly amusing) end up coming together nicely. The acting and dialogue is good throughout, and while each character does at least one really stupid thing as problems build on top of each other - the way it happens is very believable.

On the downside, the movie is set entirely at night so is very gloomy and comes across as quite low budget. It's also quite short - I could have easily handled another half an hour. And you never really find out what happens in the end - although this is understandable as the film is based around the events leading up to the crashes, not after. Still, overall a good, fun film.

Also on ciao.