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[starreview]
Classification: Personal Alternate Reality
In what begins as a typical office movie (i.e. Office Space), we are introduced to Barry Thomas, a lowly officer worker sitting in his cubicle and dreaming of a better future. As we find out, Barry doesn’t really like his job; but he does like fantasizing about Lisa, an attractive, very senior scientist who works for the same firm. Unfortunately Lisa barely even notices Barry; he is so beneath her, on so many levels, that he’s literally insignificant from her perspective.
One day, on his way home after finishing work (coincidentally exactly when Lisa finishes her work), Barry witnesses a mysterious gunman driving by. To his shock and horror, the gunman shoots Lisa and kills her on the spot. Immediately afterwards, the gunman disappears. That night Barry goes to a bar and gets really drunk. In a weird turn of events, he somehow gets zapped by a powerful electricity surge – exactly at 12:01am.
His very next memory is waking up in his bed, having no clue how he got there. Puzzled, Barry continues with his daily routine. He goes to work, and to his amazement, notices that the day’s events are identical to the events of the day before. Even more bizarrely, no one seems to remember the previous day’s events, including Lisa’s death (which has affected everyone). When he tries to investigate what happened to her, he finds out – to his great shock – that Lisa is not dead at all, and very much alive. But the day’s events repeat themselves perfectly: after finishing work, Lisa gets murdered once again. It is then Barry realizes he somehow has gone back in time and is reliving the previous day’s events.
The next day begins, and Barry quickly finds out it’s the same day all over. But this time he refuses to accept this, and begins investigating what is going on. Determined to save Lisa, Barry begins unraveling the mystery, an investigation which leads him to a shady and dangerous conspiracy. However, he has a unique advantage: he can allow himself to do dangerous things, knowing that tomorrow everything will be reset, except for the knowledge he has gained.
Will Barry find out what happened? Will he save Lisa? Will he stop this temporal loop? Watch the movie to find out!
One of the most appealing aspects of the Time Travel sub-genre, to me, is the witnessing someone’s ability to make different actions, and the effect they have on the final outcome. There aren’t many movies that do that (though it does seem every science fiction show has at least one such episode: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stargate SG1, etc). 12:01 certainly does an admirable job at this: it offers a good mystery that is slowly unraveled during Barry’s investigation, a fast paced story, and decent acting. Not to mention Jeremy Piven as Barry’s sidekick. Overall, it’s definitely an excellent movie. The only reason I’m not giving it an even higher ranking is the fact that it lacks a certain ‘brilliance’ (which Groundhog’s Day had in my humble opinion). If the film had this – how shall I say – unique twist or a philosophical perspective – it could have become a classic. Then again, maybe all that is missing is Bill Murray in the main part. I don’t know. Unfortunately that is not the case.
Lacey shared an interesting anecdote with me about 12:01. Apparently, it used to be a series of 15 minute television movies on Showtime (probably) that later evolved to this movie. I never heard of this – shame, probably could have been really good.
In summary, 12:01 is a highly entertaining, fun action/sci-fi movie. Definitely recommended.
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