Remote Hog

11:14
5 tonight
The Movie Channel

I don't recall hearing much about this flick when it came out in 2003, but it's actually better than expected—certainly better than most films with casts headed up by the adult Henry Thomas. A bunch of seemingly random, life-changing (and, in many cases, ending) events happen at 11:14 one night in a small town. Starting with one of those incidents—Thomas' drunken driver accidentally plowing his car into a pedestrian on a dark stretch of road—the story then moves backwards and forwards and every whichwards, until the threads from different characters (given life by a strong cast that includes Barbara Hershey, Hilary Swank, Colin Hanks, Rachael Leigh Cook and Patrick Swayze) all intersect, and generally at the identical witching hour referenced in the title. It wasn't the best films of '03, but it's got freeway-accident lookiloo appeal and it's impressive that a young filmmaker like Greg Marcks was able to pull off something so  complicated. I'd have loved to have been in THAT pitch meeting.