Tick Tock

"Tick Tock". is an excellent example of a film where less would have been best. What are obviously intended be taken as ultra clever plot twists eventually become so unbelievable that their impact is lost. Flipping back and forth in time is another distraction, and eventually the entire movie becomes "so what", due to the plot contrivances. Acting by Megan Ward, Kristin Minter, and Linden Ashby is acceptable, while David Dukes is superior. Don't get me wrong, the film is totally watchable, and if some of the plot twists that were piled on, were toned down or eliminated, this would be a neat little thriller. There is full frontal nudity, several attempts at dark humor that seem way out of place, and an unexpected ending that helps somewhat. MERK

When I started watching this movie on TV, my first thought was, "Never heard of any of these cast members." However, I realized that at one time Bogart, John Wayne, Tom Hanks, and Sean Connery had not been heard of either, so I was patient.

What a densely woven plot! What intrigue and double-crossing. I would not believe anyone who told me he or she figured out the ending ahead of time.

And what lovely actresses. They could energize a dull movie pretty quickly, and in this lively movie they were something else!

I would watch this one again, and try to figure out all the nuances, because there are plenty of them!

Rachel is a young woman married to a very rich older man, Holden Avery. However a night out with her friend Carla ends with a one night stand with Travis. Travis is working with Carla and they produce photographs of the two together. Travis tries to blackmail Rachel for $100,000 to destroy the photographs, but Carla is also working with Rachel in a bigger plot involving murder and double-crosses.

I didn't have high hopes for this due to it's unknown cast and the speed with which it reached TV. At the start it looked like another TV film with the same old plot, however it actually gets a bit cleverer than that and has some nice twists and turns, some you expect and some you don't. The clocks winding time back stuff allows us to jump back in forth in time every time a twist occurs - letting us see how the twist came about and a little back story or to see the same events from a different point of view. This is cleverly done but is nothing more than a fancy flashback tool. The twists get a bit silly after a while and aren't as credible the more the film goes on. It's a shame because it starts picking up momentum only to get too fast to be believable.

The unknown cast do a reasonable job, Kristin Minter is the best role (although I felt she was needless shot nude just to keep viewers interest). Megan Ward is not great, she is too tearful and scared at the start and too ruthless at the end, but she does OK. Ashby is also weak with a good ol' boy character. David Duke is one of the worst - not really doing anything with his character or lines. Ratzenberger (best known from Cheers) is good as a private eye but his scenes are often daft and this makes him look bad - for example he is following Rachel as she meets someone in a deserted parking lot, he parks 5 cars lengths away in the middle of an empty lot but doesn't get noticed! Most of his scenes have stupid mistakes like that, things that a real PI would never get away with.

Overall this is cleverer than I thought it would be. The "tick-tock" element makes the flashback idea more interesting, but the twists that are so good at first quickly get silly and a bit tiresome.

The many time shifts reminded me of the book "Slaughterhouse Five", by Kurt Vonnegut, but this movie was not as confusing as that book. Using those time shifts into the past in order to reveal some plot twists kept it interesting. Showing the spinning hands of a clock in order to alert the viewer of the upcoming time shifts did get old though. Carla's (played by Kristin Minter) constantly repeated comment "this will be better than what we planned" (or some variation thereof), which she used whenever things went wrong, also got old quickly.

John Ratzenberger's performance as P.I. Clay Fairfield, was refreshing in a non-Cliff Clavin role.

I must have missed something, but can anyone e-mail me to tell me how the body got out of the trunk about 3/4 of the way through the movie? (when shortly after that, Rachel Avery found it laying alongside the road).

We stumbled across this movie on TV whilst on holiday in Croatia and watched enthralled as it developed. It's like watching a car crash: you feel awful for the people involved but you still can't tear yourself away.

It's as if the script writer kept attempting to put in ever more unbelievable plot twists all the while thinking "they'll never go for this... or will they...?". The only thing that really annoyed us was the fact that Holden's body managed to extricate itself from the car boot with no help or explanantion.

All in all this film made me appreciate the fact that as British TV has improved, there's now less room for this kind of risible American nonsense - and perhaps we're the poorer for it.