Time Out

Earlier this year, I talked about a small, independent movie that was made here in the Denver area, called Ink. (Incidentally, it's now available on DVD. You can even get it from Netflix or watch it instantly on PC or game console or whatever; I'd recommend it.)

Well, before Ink, the same local writer-director made a film called 11:59, which I decided to check out. It's the story of a cameraman for a local "in the field" news reporter who's following the story of a man accused of multiple child murders. Growing ever more jaded even as he's receiving praise for his work, his life is thrown into chaos when he experiences a 24-hour period of missing time and awakens in an empty field a hundred miles outside the city. Soon he finds that even more alarming than his unaccounted-for day are all the horrible things that transpired during that time. And things get still more twisted from there.

This film and Ink seem to form a pattern, in as much as it's clear that as a filmmaker, Jamin Winans is interested in films that try to walk the line between science fiction and drama. Ink skews more toward the former. This film skews more to the latter. The missing time is a narrative device to tell a different story; it's not quite the story itself.

Again, as with Ink, the director knows how to make his limited budget stretch a long, long way. This movie almost never looks like it was made on the cheap. There's extensive location work used to give the film a grand scope, and it's all pretty to look at. (Even if us Denverites can occasionally recognize moments where two camera angles meant to be the same location were actually filmed in two very different places.)

What exposes the small-time truth, unfortunately, is the acting. The lead, Raymond Andrew Bailey, gives it all he's got, and does a great job. But almost every other role in the film feels like it was cast at the local dinner theater. Okay, it's a completely Denver-made film, so some it may literally have been cast at the local dinner theater. But I can say from my experiences attending plays here in the city that there are many gifted actors here. The ones in this film don't represent that cream of the crop. Line deliveries are stilted, emotions feel forced, everyone just feels a little shy of reality.

Add to this that occasionally, the film gets a little too caught up in style. There's a little too much awkward jump cutting as conveyor of disorientation, a handful of scenes that go on too long, and a few slow patches in the pacing.

But the story is interesting, and the main actor does carry it all off well enough that if you like Ink, you might want to check this film out too. Still, this is definitely the lesser of the two. I'd rate it a C+.