Running Against Time

The plot of this 1990 made for TV offering seems to have been the inspiration for Stephen King's "11-22-63" novel. King expands on the possibility of what happens IF you actually succeed in such an alteration of history. That novel aside, this flick is very enjoyable and gripping. I wish it were available on DVD or BluRay. I'm hoping it will be before my VHS copy wears out.

Time travel movies always assume that if we could travel in time, we could make the future better. Is that necessarily true? In this film, a history teacher travels back to Dallas in 1963, with full knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald's whereabouts and intent. If he can stop the murder of JFK, he believes, he can prevent the war in Vietnam

A so-so movie. A couple goes back in time to stop the assassination of President John Kennedy. This time travel tale becomes all too predictable once you know that they will fail. The movie is adequately engaging to keep you in your seat, with a nice twist at the end. But once you've watched it, you kinda get the familiar feeling that you've seen it before. If you want a good time travel plot, watch the Back To The Future series. They're definitely more original and enjoyable. I'd give Running Against Time a 5/10.

***** SPOILER ALERT ******* This made for TV movie, while modestly produced, was well executed. Robert Hays suffers over the death of his brother in Viet Nam. He meets up with Sam Wanamaker, the inventor of a time machine. (I guess you have to suspend your disbelief over time travel, but then again over a professor in the basement of a university science building concocting a working time machine.) Hays goes back to 1963 to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK. I suppose this is based on the Oliver Stone premise that Kennedy would not have escalated the war in Viet Nam. A very debatable point. It is a good dramatic point;however, just as good the one used in the Time Tunnel Titanic episode. If only a few things had changed to prevent each tragedy. Gene Roddenberry had unsuccessfully tried to advance such an idea for the Star Trek movie series. He envisioned the Enterprise going back to 1963 as well. After several unsuccessful trips back to 1963, Hayes finds that history unfolded correctly in the first place. Except he managed to change just enough to save his brother's life.

Time travel. Man's greatest wish seems to be to go back and change the past.

Is time a straight-line, or a circle? Is it relative? Does changing the past create different, parallel universes?

For this TV movie, I took the view that most movies gave which is to assume time is a straight line. Unfortuently it makes the movie a lot more confusing and hard to follow.

This TV movie is much like the 'The Butterfly Effect'. Our hero wants to go back into time and stop the war in vietnam so that his brother can live. To this end, he believes stopping the JFK assassination will stop the vietnam war ever being conducted (as well as concluding the cold war 30 years early!).

But as ever, if you change the past something will happen to make things worse for the future. For some reason, Lyndon Johnson decides to nuke Vietnam as well as send in more troops. Heck, why don't you just use the fabled 'neutron bomb' whilst your at it.

Anyhow, everything cocks up and the time-travellers are left wondering if they can ever change the past. Our hero goes to a local hospital where he finds his younger brother and tells him to stay out of Vietnam.

But if he went in the past to prevent his brother going to vietnam, this means the hero would have no recollection of his brother ever going and dying in vietnam - thus he would have no reason to go back in time.

This is one of many time-paraodoxes that can hurt your head if you try to think about it.

What happens at the end? Well, lets just say time, it appears, has a concious.

Overall: 5/10.