Director
Jamin Winans
Cast
Raymond Andrew Bailey Aaron Doherty
Laura Fuller Lisa Winders
Liz Cunningham Adele
Chris Kelly Thomas Hastings
DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007
Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 102 Minutes
The Movie
Aaron Doherty is a photo journalist that is trying to make his way up for a well known news team. The day of his life finally comes around when he and reporter Lisa Winders are following around a team of cops that are supposedly hot on the tail of suspected child murderer Thomas Hastings. When the cops come to a dead end though, Aaron takes the van on its own route and ends up coming face to face with a fleeing Hastings. He takes off and Aaron darts out of the van after him with camera in hand.
The chase commences for a few blocks with the police nowhere to be found, but Aaron finally corners Hastings and just starts filming. Hastings starts rambling about how he is innocent and there is a serious conspiracy in the works involving the upcoming election. As he continues on about his innocence; the police arrive and arrest him. Aaron is a local star in the eyes of the brass at the news station for he did what it takes to get the story. Things seem great for the time being but they are about to go in a whole new direction.
For a little celebration on his newfound success, Aaron goes out for a few drinks. The next thing he knows, he is waking up in a field miles away from his home. After bumming a ride to the city, Aaron realizes that he has missed an entire twenty-four hours. Thanks to his little adventure that he can’t remember, he almost loses his job because he caused the station to totally miss the arraignment of Hastings. He and Lisa have been stricken down to nothing stories but Aaron starts learning little tidbits of information here and there that could be essential to the case. At the end of the day he blacks out again and ends up back at the beginning of the time he missed. Now with the new information he learned in the future; he just may be able to figure out what exactly is going on.
If I could choose one word to describe 11:59, it would be boring. The film is full of pointless flashbacks and countless long periods of dialogue that made me doze off more then once. It would be a bit more interesting if Aaron could find some notes or look for some clues to prove the conspiracy theory right, but all he does is stand there dumbfounded and listen. Right after he almost gets fired for missing a day is a prime example. Aaron and Lisa sit outside talking about how he “really messed up” for what feels like forever. Aaron constantly says he doesn’t know what happened while Lisa simply repeats “but you messed up” over and over again. Great writing there.
The entire first eighty or so minutes of the film are just dull, listless, and very slow moving. You can’t really play along and try to figure out for yourself what is going on because they never really say. Every now and then Aaron will simply let Lisa know that he’s got something. Oh and if things needed to be made worse, Liz Cunnigham (Adele) and Laura Fuller (Lisa) are two of the worst actresses I’ve ever seen. Fuller shows no emotion at all and Cunningham is so horribly over the top as the stereotypical bitch news boss that it becomes quite funny after a while.
11:59 has an interesting premise that is hindered by bad writing, bad acting, and just too much dialogue. Perhaps if the film was cut down to maybe forty minutes with the beginning, ending, and a little in the middle; then it would be easier to take. But considering that Raymond Andrew Bailey (Aaron) is the only bright spot in the film, there isn’t much more to enjoy. I mean come on, who’s going to believe that someone is going to be more concerned with losing their job then wondering why they hell he can time travel all of a sudden?
The Video
The film is shown in 1.66:1 Anamorphic Widescreen format and looks alright. There is a bit of a blue hue throughout the duration of the film but that was obviously intentional to make it seem as if Aaron is in some kind of limbo-like state.
The Audio
The film is heard in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and is horrible, just horrible. The music is overly loud and overpowers every single thing else whenever it is playing. All dialogue is extremely low which makes it not only hard to hear when the music is playing, but also when it’s not. I spent the entire film turning up the volume and turning it down because I could never hear anyone talking or the music was deafening me.
Special Features
Audio Commentary – Director Jamin Winans and director of photography Jeff Pointed sit down to discuss the film. They mostly talk about how it is making their first film and doing it on a budget that was about as low as one hundred thousand dollars. Nothing of real interest here other then them discussing how they did certain things with no money. It is quite amusing hearing Winans say he wanted to start the film off with a bang because there never really is much of a bang throughout.
Interviews – Four interviews here coming to about twenty minutes total. First is director Winans, then Raymond Andrew Bailey, then producer Joe Sekiya, and finally Jeff Pointer. Each and every interview is almost identical because they ask the exact same questions over and over again. Very generic questions they are too like: “who are you?” “What is 11:59 about?” and “Where did the idea for the film come from?”
Spin – This is an eight minute short film that honestly is better then the one hundred minute long feature. A DJ and his two turn-tables happen upon a scene where people are crowded around a bike messenger that was just struck by a car. With his turn-tables, the DJ spins the records to go back in time and fix things so the accident won’t happen. When he does alter things though, it causes other problems. After working through it a few times, he actually makes everyone a lot happier. Very entertaining.
Spin Commentary – Winans is happy that people are getting the chance to check out his early work and is quite proud of it. What kind of struck a nerve with me though is that he says he got the idea for Spin by attending a hip-hop convention. He said he was “amazed by how someone was able to captivate an audience just by spinning records.” Just by spinning records? That’s rather insulting. Spinning records and creating beats is what those guys do and he makes it sound like it is so incredibly simple.
Original Theatrical Trailer
Trailers – Red Road, 1208 To Bucharest, Triad Election, A World Without Thieves, and Silk
The Inside Pulse
Trying to take some styles from other directors is an alright idea if you know how to do it. Winans obviously wanted to go the mysterious way of M. Night Shyamalan with a slight backwards touch of Quentin Tarentino. It would have worked just fine had the film not been so incredibly boring. As is said in the commentary, this is Winans first film so I’ll give him credit for trying to create something intriguing with a bit of suspense put in, but on your next film you really need to work on cutting some things out. There is so much dialogue that could have been cut down or left out all together and not only shortened the film by twenty minutes but made it much quicker paced. The special features for 11:59 aren’t worth watching but short film Spin and the commentary for it are surely great to check out. If you look around the internet, you’re bound to find it somewhere so don’t spend your money just to get an eight minute short.
