Slipstream

I really believe a fourth grader could have written better dialog and plot. The idea for this movie creates tremendous potential which is totally wasted on sheer stupidity of conversation and illogical plot. Movies involving time travel can be tricky but if done right, can also be very thought provoking. This movie doesn't even try to go there. This movie, like so many scifi's today, is overly focused on special effects with the plot and dialog treated as an afterthought. I'll have to remember the name, David Van Eyssen, and make concerted efforts NOT to watch anything directed by him. Foolish waste of time. I really have nothing more to say about this movie but the submission filter wants more lines. So here they are.

This is the kind of movie that could be decent, but becomes unwatchable because the director's so in love with his/her techniques. The plot's not groundbreaking, but it is different from most time travel movies where you keep going back in time. Unfortunately, the director likes the soundtrack and sloooooow motion so much he keeps using it over and over, resulting in something you may enjoy if you love meaningless pontification on our existence or what-not. That is, the film doesn't provide for it but David what's-his-name probably wants you to ponder and reminisce during the frequent slooow-motion rewinding of history. The premise is hard to believe already. It's a shame he decides to be clever with techniques. Over and over and over again.

What would you do if you had a handheld time machine that would let you go back ten minutes? In Sean Astin's case, he uses it to perfect his pickup of the cute bank cashier he's been obsessing on for months. What he doesn't know is that FBI agents Ivana Milicevic and Kevin Otto have been trailing him as a potential security risk --justified, it seems, because he has removed the time-travel device from a national laboratory. And what none of them know is that Vinnie Jones and his all-British crew are going to rob the bank, gun blazing.

It's a very pleasant little story that would have rated high in the rankings in a mid-1940s pulp SF magazine of the better sort. Astin looks bewildered. Jones snarls. The others try to look effective, and it all sorts out satisfactorily in the end.

When I deal with sf, I try to look for the little things, and I was astonished at how much things have changed in the two decades since this was made. There are lines at the bank! The time machine is referred to as a 'PDA' (for those of you too young to remember, that was short for "Personal Digital Assistant")!

An interesting time-travel-correct-your-mistakes story with a lot of possibilities, unfortunately told by a director who seems to be far more interested in slow motion car crashes (and ludicrous gunbattles) than in telling a coherent story. It also doesn't help that the dialog is often laughable, and spoken too quickly and/or flatly (especially by Sean Astin -- but that too is the director's fault. I'm not sure van Eyssen was actually paying attention during dialog scenes. It's clear that if he was paying attention, he wasn't interested in it.)

Perhaps with a different director this would have been a clever little film, but alas not. This was filmed as if it was a very long commercial (indeed, the director's experience appears to be entirely in the realm of television commercials), rather than a conventional movie. Perhaps this style appeals to audiences whose attention spans are all microscopic (and so the fact that many scenes don't make sense even internally, must less to the rest of the movie) -- because they simply are incapable of noticing such flaws. But I sure as heck did.

For you budding directors who want to make films, please use this movie as an example of what not to do. Don't show off, don't try to be 'impressionistic' -- it's clear that the monumentally pretentious positioning and use of the camera was intended this way -- don't use flash cutting and vary the film speed just because you saw in in a Tarantino flick, a music video, or someone else's commercial. Just tell the flippin' story, OK?

... hey, mentioning QT: *that's* where I saw that whole stupid bank-robber subplot in this flick that didn't matter -- "natural born killers" (from me, this is NOT a compliment, by the way.) And I am STILL trying to figure out that whole cell-phone tower thing... But give this a pass -- a great little movie idea that didn't get the story-telling it deserved.

A world away from the 1989 sci-fi faux pas starring Mark Hamill and Bill Paxton that carried this movie title, this a low-budget film with an interesting cast. Most notably last seen in The Lord of the Rings, Sean Astin, Bosnian beauty Ivana Milicevic and Hertfordshire hardman Vinnie Jones.

However, despite being produced on a very limited budget, and in a remarkably short period of time (27 days according to van Eyssen), this film still remains watchable.

The script is good and delivery from Astin is excellent. Vinnie Jones plays…well, Vinnie Jones and Milicevic has her moments; only plot holes in the screenplay itself, written by Louis Morneau and Phillip Badger, let the actors down in important scenes of interaction.

This film doesn't have the same seamless flow that other time-playback movies like the fantastic Run Lola Run or even Groundhog Day or Sliding Doors has. Consequently you're never quite sure whether you actually give a damn about the characters or not.

It becomes apparent as the film unfolds that the director had to cut corners (the budget was repeatedly slashed according to van Eyssen) and gaping wide plot holes are hurriedly painted over with techno-babble and the extremely convenient occurrence of events.

However, despite these issues, the cinematography in places is excellent and van Eyssen uses inexpensive camera techniques very well demonstrating that stunning big screen effects can be achieved without a Battlestar-sized budget.

A little bit of background info putting this movie into context will make it much more interesting and it's an enjoyable example of the potential of director David van Eyssen.