Time Runner |
  • Canada / USA • 1993 • 90m •   • Directed by: Michael Mazo. • Starring: Mark Hamill, Rae Dawn Chong, Brion James, Mark Baur, Gordon Tipple, John Maclaren, John Thomas, Barry W. Levy, Allan Forget, Charlie Fleming, Suzy Joachim, Clif Kosterman, Dale Moore. • Music by: Braun Farnon, Robert Smart.      Finding itself invaded by a superior alien force in the year 2022, humanity's last hope lies with fighter pilot Michael Raynor who is hurled through a time warp back to the year 1992. Relentlessly hounded by a ruthless agent belonging to a super-secret government organization, Raynor learns he can affect the future and, with the help of scientist Karen McDonald, attempts to alert authorities to the upcoming alien threat.
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Review:
Hamill plays a guy from the future, sent back in time through a wormhole in the midst of an alien invasion to try to stop the invasion from happening. He meets up with scientist Rae Dawn Chong, who turns out to be one of the aliens herself but helps him anyway because apparently the aliens who are actually planning to invade Earth are some kind of renegades of her planet. One of them is the guy who will be the future President of the World. These are really only minor spoilers actually because the movie is so completely predictable. Brion James and Mark Baur hold down the villain roles, with James in particular being very underwhelming with his one note performance. Gordon Tipple plays the strange character Arnie, who's airplane is hijacked by Hamill and Chong but who ends up joining them for the whole rest of the adventure apparently out of sheer boredom with his regular life.
Everything in this movie we've seen before. Who out there is going to be surprised when the villains decide to kill Hamill's character's mother to avoid him being born? Obviously the whole thing is a rip on "Terminator", except that in this case the aliens don't have to travel back in time to hunt Hamill, they're already in 1992 when he gets there. The name of the film and the presence of James in the cast might remind one of "Blade Runner", which would be an extremely unfortunate comparison to make. All of this being said, I didn't find the movie excruciatingly boring. Mark Hamill is a good actor and I think he did good work in the movie, as did Chong, despite the limitations of the script. The effects are surprisingly well done, although nothing really spectacular happens. And it has a nice sort of downbeat ending, plus it avoid the romantic distractions of "Terminator" -- not that they didn't make "Terminator" a better film, but it's just that almost every other imitation I've seen has imitated the romance to much lesser effect so I was glad they didn't attempt that here with Chong and Hamill.
Basically a mediocre film, but it won't be a waste of time for sci-fi fans.
Review by coverme6 [IMDB 20 July 2001] from the Internet Movie Database.
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