95ers: Time Runners |
USA • 2013 • 96m •
  • Directed by: Thomas Gomez Durham. • Starring: Alesandra Durham, Joel Bishop, Terence Goodman, K. Danor Gerald, Ian Paul Freeth, Chris Laird, Anne Sward, Alix Maria Taulbee, Alan Peterson, Christopher Robin Miller, Serenity Johnson, Michelle Patrick, James Jamison. • Music by: James Durham.    Special Agent Sally Biggs has a secret. She can rewind time--a few seconds--whenever she wants. It's enough to make her a celebrity at the FBI and control almost everything in her life. But deep down, she's afraid of the pain that comes from the things no one can control. Her worst fears are realized when her scientist husband disappears mysteriously. Paranormal apparitions begin to surround her. Strangers with terrifying technologies know her secret, and want her dead. Her only clue is her husband's ghost--who she follows onto a battlefield she never knew existed. She must discover the awesome truth that ties all the mysteries together, before the fabric of her being--and the ones she loves most--fade out of reality.
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Review:
While the experience of Sally is portrayed as sequentially exploring one possible timeline after another, by rewinding time, the visual portrayal of the timeline as simultaneously branching, both in Horatio's book, as well as The Navigator's simulation, is very close to the way that multiple overlapping timelines might actually work.
Although I'm not a fan of Time Teleporters, (time machines which create discontinuities in space andor time - meaning you blink to another point in time and space), this kind of discontinuity does not become problematic in this story, because of the introduction of 'paradoxes', as relics of overlapping possibility flows. Also, 'paradoxes' allow for a meaningful explanation for an otherwise cheesy "Marty McFly starts to fade out of existence", as timelines begin to diverge.
The term 'gravity' is used kind of strangely, I think. It is meant to be an indicator of how multiple simultaneously timelines interplay with each other, where the timeline with a lower gravity cannot have deterministic consequences on a timeline with a higher gravity. This is portrayed when agents from the future try to shoot Sally, and their bullets don't do anything to her. The Navigator is also waiting for the 'gravity' of Sally's timeline to get low enough before sending the Captain, presumably so that their attempts to modify the past will actually have an effect. I think the term 'stability' or something like it, would have been more indicative of what is being portrayed here.
There are a couple of narrative discontinuities (not related to time travel). The first is the jump from 'Horatio and Sally are having a fun and lively courtship' to 'Horatio and Sally got married, Horatio died, and Sally is pregnant'. This narrative leap occurred over the course of a couple of seconds, and left me confused. The second discontinuity is the revelation that Sally and Horatio were having marital troubles, when the only thing you've seen from their relationship so far is their fun and lively courtship. This second discontinuity can actually be seen as one of the intermediate stages skipped by the first discontinuity. It seems like these problems could have been solved with less than 5 minutes of storytelling, between the time Sally and Horatio are courting, and the time when she arrives home, alone, to be disturbed by Horatio's 'ghost'.
Discontinuities aside, the story unfolds meaningfully, without placing all the cards on the table at once. The introduction of Sally's ability progresses in a natural well paced sequence. In addition, there are multiple layers of symbolism in the story. References to A Christmas Carol, which talks about 'ghosts' and the 'past, present, and future'. References to the unfolding of time as a game of chess, and players in the game taking roles. Horatio feels like a pawn, and Sally is represented as the Queen. All of these elements are evidence of masterful storytelling on the part of Thomas Gomez, et al.
Review by analytic-spinors from the Internet Movie Database.
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