In a decade loaded with puzzle pictures—structurally innovative movies like Run Lola Run, Pulp Fiction, and Atom Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter—Memento probably stands as the most technically sophisticated, since its achronology is packed with the details of an amnesiac's unreliable investigation. But the film's real achievement isn't its backward structure so much as what that structure serves, namely a profound examination on the nature of memory and how it plays into one man's grief and self-deception. All of which leaves 11:14, a star-packed indie that also unfolds in reverse time, to shrink away into pea-sized significance. Writer-director Greg Marcks has deftly orchestrated a series of interconnected events that take place at around the same time, but it's hard to fathom exactly why he's done it, other than to show off a little. Where's the beef?
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