Cinematical

The first 20 minutes of 2 AM made me dread the rest of the film. I feared this would be another one of those low-budget features in which a bunch of twentysomethings sit around (in a bar, this time) and talk about their lives and their relationships and how they just want to find their place in life. In addition, the acting in those first scenes was uneven, one character was extremely unlikeable, and I felt restless.

Fortunately, after those rough 20 minutes, 2 AM blossomed into an absorbing drama, the acting grew more realistic and consistent, and I enjoyed the film very much. Most low-budget "relationship" films I've seen lately have focused on insecure white guys; 2 AM portrays a broader spectrum of characters and points of view.2 AM ties together three stories by the conceit that strange things can happen to you in the middle of the night, just like Griffin Dunne in After Hours. Most of the events in 2 AM center around relationships: one begins, one is over, one is never going to get off the ground. The guys in the bar in the first scene leave singly or in groups, which is how these stories begin.

The best story was about Carrol (Jeremy Denzlinger), who is self-conscious about an accident that left him with a permanent leg injury, requiring him to use a cane. He is certain that no woman will ever want to date him, and can't believe that Joey (Sonya Tsuchigane), the gorgeous woman he has been seeing around the bar, might actually find him attractive. The two potential lovers repeatedly miscommunicate and misunderstand each other in a way that makes you wonder how two people ever, ever hook up in this world.

I also liked the character Keith (Billy Brooks), who watches on the sidelines while his friends do crazy stuff all night long. He's dragged to a party where Les (Korey Coleman) hopes to improve relations with his ex-girlfriend Ember (Mia Stitt-Selexman). What happens to Keith at the party is broadly comic and entertaining. Brooks did an outstanding job with the character.

As I said earlier, I disliked one character intensely: Jafo (Travis Ammons), the guy who leaves the bar first with not one but two women, both blondes, and cannot believe his great good luck. The character reminded me strongly of some of the less appealing guys from Kevin Smith films. Fortunately, he isn't more than a third of the movie, and when he reappears at the end he's relatively less obnoxious.

2 AM is writer-director Korey Coleman's first feature. Coleman has said that 2 AM took him about five years to make, on and off, and that it was his film school. He realized after he started shooting that he himself isn't a great actor, so he rewrote his dialogue as lines that he could say more naturally. After that opening sequence, his performance as Les is fine and works well with the rest of the first-rate cast. 2 AM is uneven, but it's more than merely training for Coleman's future filmmaking endeavors. It's a solid, watchable low-budget film that I hope will get more screenings after SXSW.