11 Minutes review: Great set-up, though lacks eventual satisfaction.
11 Minutes review
11 Minutes is an intriguing new movie from director and sometime actor Jerzy Skolimowski (he actually appeared in the first Avengers movie), an interesting thriller that assembles a number of different circumstances that take place within 11 minutes. Caught up in a chain of events that lead to a catastrophic climax, a number of very different individuals interact with one another, knowingly, or indeed unknowingly that contribute to their ultimate fate.
Featuring a mother about to give birth, a sleazy movie producer (Richard Dormer) interviewing a budding actress on his hotel casting couch, her desperate, and very jealous husband trying to find her before the inevitable happens, a hot dog seller, a motorbike (drug) courier who is escaping the bed of a married woman, a film crew, an artist painting a water-colour of a bridge and many others, Skolimowski’s film has an excellent style to it, and the filmmaker paces his film really quite well. The issue that we had with the film is just how interested we are in these people’s lives, and despite each ‘segment’ only lasting 11 minutes, the movie takes a long time in getting to the point. While we understand that the destination isn’t really that point, but rather the journey that the filmmaker is taking us on, we couldn’t help become impatient with the constant plodding, particularly during the first half.
11 Minutes review
However, one thing that Skolimowski does manage to do is engage us with his very brilliant direction and editing, whipping forwards and back repeating certain interactions, which realign you with where we are with proceedings, and there’s a really clever part where the story is told from the point-of-view of an Alsatian dog. The delivery is exceptional, but when the plot is unravelled and we’re finally treated to the gift of the explosive final few moments, you can’t help but feel a little let down with the package as a whole. That said, Skolimowski’s film certainly raises questions about fate and how the little decisions we make in life could be the biggest, and is by no means a poor movie by any stretch.
11 Minutes review by Paul Heath, October 2015/
11 Minutes plays at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival. The film is currently awaiting a general release in the UK and US.
