Line #57 Film/ElevenFourteen


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/elevenfourteen.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:[[TagLine Five lives. One moment. No coincidence.]]]]
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4
5	->''"Jesus, you're having a rough night."''
6	-->-- '''The police dispatcher''' to Officer Hannagan
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8	A 2003 movie written and directed by Greg Marcks, ''11:14'' consists of five interlocking stories that take place late one night in a town called Middletown. Each story lasts about twenty minutes and begins about five minutes before the one that came before it, so that the movie ends more or less where it begins. Each story also casts a little light on the events of the earlier stories.
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10	* Late one night, Jack Levine (Creator/HenryThomas) is driving into town and talking on his cell phone. "Heh... I wouldn't say I'm drunk…" '''CRASH'''
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12	* About five minutes earlier: Three [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb teenagers]], Tim (Creator/StarkSands), Mark (Creator/ColinHanks) and Eddie (Creator/BenFoster), head out in a van for a fun night of driving all over town, throwing things out the window. [[SarcasmMode This'll end well.]]
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14	* About five minutes earlier: Frank (Creator/PatrickSwayze) takes his dog for an evening walk. In the cemetery, he is horrified to discover...
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16	* About five minutes earlier: Buzzy (Creator/HilarySwank) is minding the store when her friend Duffy (Shawn Hatosy) comes in with an immediate need for cash — and a desperate plan to get it.
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18	* About five minutes earlier: Frank's daughter Cheri (Creator/RachaelLeighCook) heads out for a night of fun with her boyfriend. Their date takes a dark turn when…
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20	That's about all that can be said about this movie without spoiling it.
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22	----
23	!! This film provides examples of:
24	* AllLoveIsUnrequited: [[spoiler: Buzzy clearly likes Duffy as more than a friend. Duffy is hopelessly in love with Cheri. Cheri is seeing Aaron behind Duffy's back. And playing them both so she can run away with Jack, who is likely just as expendable to her as the other two. This is kind of Cheri's thing, since she also cares nothing for the feelings of her parents who love her dearly.]]
25	* TheAllegedCar: Cheri borrows one of these from her father. Whenever it stops, starting it again is a crapshoot.
26	* AssholeVictim: By the end of the movie, it's hard to feel too upset about [[spoiler:[[ManipulativeBastard Cheri]]'s death]].
27	** Also, [[spoiler: Eddie,]] a total punk who wears a shirt that says "Legalize Crime," definitely suffers for his behavior.
28	* BackToFront
29	* BadLiar: Tim. "I'm a klepto."
30	* BlackAndGreyMorality: Besides Norma, Officer Hannigan and the two paramedics, every other character in this movie ends up committing a crime of some sort.
31	* BlackComedy: Very ''black''. This is a movie about ordinary people who really suck at doing bad things, so this shows up quite a bit.
32	* BrickJoke: The bowling ball, the donut on the windshield, the burning paperback, the rubber gloves… this movie is built out of Brick Jokes.
33	* CannotTellALie: Buzzy calls herself a "BadLiar," but this trope describes her more accurately — a Bad Liar tries to lie and fails, but Buzzy seems to have given up trying.
34	-->[[spoiler: '''Hannigan:''' ''You were both in on this, weren't you?'']]
35	-->[[spoiler:'''Buzzy:''' ''Y-yes.'']]
36	* ComingAndGoing: [[spoiler: Cheri and Aaron have sex in a cemetery. They come. He goes.]]
37	* ConArtist: [[spoiler: Cheri and Jack.]]
38	* ChekhovsArmoury: Almost every background element or trivial action--from the burning book to Duffy's bowling ball--turns out to have a role in the resolution.
39	* ContrivedCoincidence: Tons, though some of them may be [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by the fact that the film is seemingly set in a ''very'' small town.
40	* DestroyTheEvidence: Frank gets rid of his bloodstained shirt by using the [[ChekhovsGun burning book]] to set fire to it, and then dumping it down the sewer. Even this almost gets him caught, as Norma drives by unexpectedly.
41	* DidntThinkThisThrough: Pretty much the lynchpin of the film, which is pretty much all about ordinary people panicking their way through crimes. Cheri, who is made out to be something of a cunning sociopath, seems to be the sole exception to this, taking precaution after precaution when [[spoiler: trying to set Duffy up for Aaron's death. However, she has a massive lapse in judgment when she reports the robbery, as implicating Duffy in the robbery would give him a plausible alibi for not being present to murder Aaron.]]
42	* DownerEnding: At the end, Frank and Norma have [[spoiler: lost their daughter Cheri]], Buzzy and Duffy are [[spoiler: almost certainly going to be recaptured and go to prison]], Eddie's [[spoiler: penis might or might not be reattached successfully]], and he, Mark, Tim and Jack are all in varying degrees of trouble with the law. Nobody really comes out ahead.
43	* DrunkDriver: Jack is driving drunk when he runs over [[spoiler:Aaron's corpse]].
44	* DullSurprise: Duffy's reaction to the out-of-nowhere question [[spoiler: "How about the penis?"]] To be fair, at this point he's somewhere on the wrong side of the [[DespairEventHorizon Despair Event Horizon]].
45	* EnsembleCast: For a small movie, this has quite a cast and crew. In addition to the actors mentioned above, there's Barbara Hershey (the mom from hell in ''Film/BlackSwan''), Creator/JasonSegel as a paramedic and Creator/ClarkGregg (Phil Coulson in ''[[Film/TheAvengers2012 The Avengers]]'' and ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'') as a very overworked cop. Also, Music/ClintMansell wrote the score. The director of photography is Shane Hurlburt, who has an extensive filmography but is perhaps best known for being on the receiving end of Christian Bale's tirade during the filming of ''Film/TerminatorSalvation''.
46	* ExtremelyShortTimespan: It's a full-length movie, but due to being RashomonStyle with a huge cast, the events of forty minutes (from 10:54 to 11:34 PM) covered in RealTime, fills a feature-length film.
47	* FacialHorror: The corpse of Aaron Lewis.
48	* FatSuit: Downplayed. Swayze, still in trim after all these years, wore only a little padding under his shirt to make himself more like a middle-aged everyman.
49	* FilleFatale: Cheri. [[spoiler: While she's having sex with Aaron in the cemetery, the guy's head gets crushed by the fallen head of an angel statue. After about a minute of shock and horror, she's already come up with a plan on how to make it look as if this accidental death was a murder committed by Cheri's ''other'' boyfriend. Cue Cheri's attempt to frame Duffy.]]
50	* GoldDigger: Cheri [[spoiler: is making two of her boyfriends each pay the full cost of her "abortion." She isn't pregnant.]]
51	* GroinAttack: [[spoiler: Mike's van crashes while Eddie is peeing out the window. The window slams shut.]]
52	* HyperlinkStory: [[spoiler:Jack is talking to his girlfriend Cheri at the beginning. He's hit with the (already dead) body of her other boyfriend, Aaron, which was thrown by her father, whose wife attacks Jack because she (mistakenly) thinks he's killed Cheri, who has died in between the phone call and the attack after being hit by the van containing Mark, Tim, and Eddie. Duffy (Cheri's ''[[OverlyLongGag other]]'' other boyfriend) is stealing money to pay for Cheri's (fake) abortion, which is why he shoots at Mark, Tim, and Eddie.]]
53	* IdiotBall: Several examples, but the biggest one has to be either [[spoiler:Eddie peeing out the window]] or [[spoiler:Buzzy playing with Duffy's gun]].
54	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Tim, who runs back to the scene of the accident — from which they just fled after someone ''shot'' at them — to retrieve [[spoiler:his friend's severed penis.]]
55	* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Mark stops the van in the middle of the road while they're driving Eddie to the hospital in order to coerce him into lying. "You can either say I didn't hit you, or you can bleed to ''death'' for all I care! SAY IT!" ([[DidntThinkThisThrough No word on how he plans on]] holding Eddie to this after they get to the hospital.)
56	* LaserGuidedKarma: A few characters experience this, but most notably Jack. At first, he just seems like a hapless drunk driver whose pathetic attempts at avoiding jail time are almost pitiable. [[spoiler: At the the end of the movie (which is also the beginning), we find out Jack was on his way to meet his DarkMistress, Cheri, who is likely under-age. He's in on her plan to con Duffy and Aaron out of their money, presumably so they can run away together. If the fact that it was Aaron's corpse that landed on his car and got him in trouble wasn't poetic justice, then tripping over Duffy's bowling ball while trying to escape through the cemetery definitely was.]]
57	* LookBothWays: [[spoiler:Cheri]] not only steps into the street with looking, she stops to answer her phone in the middle of the road. Despite the dangerous driving on [[spoiler:Mark]]'s part, what happens next is at least partially her fault.
58	* MamaBear: Norma (Barbara Hershey)… [[spoiler: although her frenzied attack on the man she thinks killed her daughter only serves to delay his capture.]]
59	* NotWhatItLooksLike: Two separate examples that guide part of the plot.
60	** Frank finds [[spoiler:Cheri's keys with Aaron's corpse, and assumes she killed him, resulting in him trying to dispose of the body in a panic]].
61	** Jack is accused of [[spoiler:killing Cheri… who coincidentally was struck by a car at the exact same time that Aaron's corpse hit his own car]].
62	* OnlyAFleshWound: Subverted. [[spoiler: To disguise the fact that Buzzy was in on the robbery, Duffy shoots her in the arm (at her own request). Trying not to injure her too badly, he pinches the skin of her upper arm into a fold and shoots through the skin (coming very close to blowing off his own fingertip in the process).]] So Buzzy receives a ''literal'' flesh wound… and collapses on the floor in pain.
63	* OutWithABang: [[spoiler: While Aaron and Cheri are having sex in the cemetery, his head gets crushed by the fallen head of an angel statue that is dislodge when he rocks against a headstone in a fit of passion.]]
64	* PantsPositiveSafety: Duffy arrives at Lloyd's with his revolver shoved so deeply down the front of his pants that the handle is barely showing above his waistband. And, yes, it is pointing at his groin. Given everything else that goes wrong with the robbery, it is a miracle that he does not shoot himself in the nuts.
65	* PapaWolf: Frank. "I will ''not'' see you ruin her life!"
66	* PottyEmergency: Eddie is desperate to take a leak and decides to piss out the window of Mark's van. [[spoiler:This distracts Mark and causes the accident that kills Cheri and [[GroinAttack severs Eddie's penis]].]]
67	* RecklessGunUsage: Duffy and Buzzy are both guilty of this.
68	** In a failed attempt to [[WeaponForIntimidation intimidate]] Buzzy, Duffy points a loaded gun directly at her head with his finger on the trigger.
69	** Buzzy, left alone with the gun, picks it up and starts playing with it like a child. The bullets fall out… and she puts them back in and ''continues'' horsing around with the gun, performing a series of action-movie stunts that end in her accidentally putting a bullet through a cooler full of [[ProductPlacement Jolt™ Cola]]. If anyone had been in the line of fire at the time, [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace this]] would have happened.
70	* RevealingCoverup: Exaggerated. By the end of the movie, three different people have gone to extremes to conceal, disguise or frame someone else for [[spoiler: the death of Aaron Lewis… who died by accident.]]
71	* RunningOverThePlot: The film starts with Jack Levine running into someone ([[spoiler:Aaron's already-dead body]]) while driving while talking on his cellphone and intoxicated. Due to the film's AnachronicOrder, this is also where it ends, but with ''another'' person ([[spoiler:Cheri]]) being hit by a ''different'' car at the exact same time.
72	* StupidCrooks: Nearly every character is committing some kind of crime. And are all hilariously bad at it.
73	* TheseGlovesAreMadeForKillin: PlayedWith when FilleFatale Cheri rushes to her home to grab a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the kitchen after Aaron's head was crushed by the head of an angel statue while they were [[OutWithABang having sex.]] Cheri intends to cover up the accidental death by framing her boyfriend Duffy while using gloves to cover her prints. Her father does not question why she's getting them.
74	* TimeTitle: About two car crashes at the titular time.
75	* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: If you don't want to learn about [[spoiler: the severed penis]], or what really happened to Aaron, don't watch the trailer.
76	* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Just about every bad thing that happens in the movie is due to the actions and choices of [[spoiler: Cheri.]]
77	* UnwittingPawn: Duffy and Aaron [[spoiler: and possibly Jack are this to Cheri.]]
78	* WhamLine: [[spoiler: "Does he know you're not pregnant?"]]

Context Film / ElevenFourteen