TEN 'TIL NOON (2006)
Starring Rick D. Wasserman, Rayne Guest, George Williams, Jenya Lano, Thomas Kopache, Alfonso Freeman, Jason Hamer, Daniel Hagen, Dylan Kussman, Jennifer Hill, Daniel Nathan Spector, Paul J. Alessi and Erin Stutland.
Written by Paul Osborne.
Directed by Scott Storm.
Distributed by Radio London Films. 83 minutes. Not Rated.
An interesting new-noir film made doubly intriguing by its unorthodox story structure, Ten 'til Noon is about just that – ten minutes in the life of ten people who engage in a crime in diverse ways. The story continually doubles back on itself to show the ten minutes of the plot from another participants' points of view – adding layers of information to the point that we realize that nothing we originally assumed about the action is quite what we thought was happening. We watch from 11:50 to 12:00 in all of these lives, see how they intersect, overlap, and try to figure out who is doing what to whom.
We start in the bedroom of a businessman who has just returned from Europe. He is awakened by a smooth hit man (played by Alfonso Freeman, who not only looks like but also shares the intense acting style of his father, Morgan). The hit man tells the businessman that his wife is having an affair and after the ten minutes we cut back to that affair in progress. Then we see it from the point of view of a pair of slimy detectives who have been paid to videotape the clandestine encounter. Then we go to the mobster who hired them, his boss and the hit man's female partner.
Seeing the events played out through different eyes – as well as other events which earlier characters had no way of experiencing – allows the pieces of the crime puzzle to come into place.
Eventually, though, the structure of the film boxes itself in and we have to move forward beyond the stopping point of noon – because no matter how many angles you look at it from, there is additional information that can only be exposed with time.
The new tough crime tales have been playing with timelines since Tarantino's labyrinthine Pulp Fiction came out almost fifteen years ago, and it is to screenwriter Paul Osborne's credit that he is able to come up with a mostly unique story structure.
As far as the characters are concerned – they are mostly hardened, decadent and deadly. Several characters commit disturbing acts (and not just in the commission of the act – the two PIs particularly push the disturbing behavior envelope and yet don't personally affect any of the events of the crime.) Even when someone is selfless, no good deed goes unpunished.
This certainly not a perfect movie, but it is an intriguing one. It piles on trick ending after trick ending until your head is spinning a bit, and yet most of it does make some sad sense. Ten 'til Noon is lean, mean, dark, occasionally very sexy and in the end rather tragic – all of which are a recipe for a good crime thriller.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2007 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 25, 2007.
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