Paradox |
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USA • 2016 • 90m •
   • Directed by: Michael Hurst. • Starring: Zoë Bell, Malik Yoba, Adam Huss, Bjørn Alexander, Brian Flaccus, Michael Aaron Milligan, Steve Suh, Darren Bailey, Nick Benseman, Jonathan Camp, Courtney Compton, Dustin Cornelius, Ashley Hayes. • Music by: Alexander Bornstein.      A group of young scientists are working on a secret project that may allow them to travel ahead in time. They test it by sending one of their own ahead one hour. He returns pleading with them to shut it down, explaining that within that hour, they will all die.
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Review:
Within the first minute or so of hitting play I realised it was a 'TV movie' type production and turned it off. Tonight I stuck it on in the background and after a few minutes I knew I had watch it through to be able to write an honest review.
The acting was almost like the first try at a play by a bunch of strangers who never knew each other and hadn't acted before. It had a feel of being filmed by a single camera. A top secret basement unknown by all top organisations is being used to house a cutting edge time travel machine. On the walls of this cutting edge facility are a few fluorescent tube lights attached vertically (with wires trailing around), some red beacons and a white board with sums on it. Next to a wall mounted first aid box are some 1970's oscillators on a shelf. There are a couple of machines with flashing lights, I think these might be the ones Ivan Drago's team had in Rocky IV. A desk hosts a flexible desk lamp, some pencils in a tub, a chunky black PC keyboard and a couple of monitors - one showing a pink wave animation and the other showing the view in front of it...
The time travel podium resembles a stand in a music shop with a few wires running up the metal columns. The head of this elite group of time travellers resembles Morpheus with an English accent, and the team are all wearing grey overalls (they may also work at a tyre garage during the day?) Once all of the city power is turned off to fire the music podium lights to life, Colin Farrell travels forward an hour only to find a body on the ground with the head replaced by a puddle of soup. The basement speakers then announce 1970's James Bond style that the self destruct countdown is about to commence (as a handy reminder the lighting turns into strobe lighting). The small corridor in this cutting edge facility basement has a couple of alphabet letters on the wall, an elevator (complete with voice to announce when it isn't working) and a few doors reminiscent of living room doors. I couldn't help but realise how my local gym corridor looks more modern than this.
The guys go into a room with another flexible desk lamp to discuss what to do about this situation, as a swat team enter the building up at ground level. Apparently the elevator is the only link between floors (none of the living room doors have a staircase behind them?...) For some reason one of the grey overalls team is confined to a basic wheelchair, he stays to watch the fuzzy footage brought back on a camcorder by Colin Farrell. At this point we see a sinister person dressing up in a gas mask and creep around like something from 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'. The elite forces up at ground level have called an electrician in by now who has "Heard you got a problem?". After opening a wall box and exclaiming "Shitkegs burnt wires?!" he reassures them that this will take a while.
Meanwhile back in the hospital basement the tyre fitters are opening some 1980's metal lockers, having managed to get past the 4 digit padlocks. Colin Farrell and his girlfriend sit on office desk chairs and type on the chunky PC keyboard, managing to summon up some 1980's style green digits that scroll up the screen (did Morpheus bring a disk from the Matrix?) In the background we see stickers on boxes such as 'Fragile', 'This Side Up', Electrical Material'. Colin gets upset when he finds out that his girlfriend is really a spy who lied to him, as I Know What Gas Mask You Wore Last Summer creeps around in the dark with his green night vision goggles.
Morpheus is going around in circles in another dark room with lots of twinkly lights, before being brought back to the room with a world map on the wall and tied to a pipe by Colin and spy girlfriend. Eventually Morpheus owns up that he is in fact American, pulls out his Matrix mini disc and reveals that Colin Farrell has nose bleed and a headache due to brain damage from travelling through time. Wheelchair guy does some pretend acting and whimpers that there's nothing they can do to change their fate, to which Spy Girlfriend exclaims... "Fk!"
To cut a long story short there ends up being 3 Colin Farrells, I Know What Gas Mask You Wore Last Summer starts talking like Jigsaw and fights with Spy Girlfriend, more self destruct strobes flash, the elite forces swat team upstairs sit around in silence the entire time doing nothing, the elevator shaft gets engulfed by some cgi fire in the foreground, Spy Girlfriend and Jigsaw climb up the red elevator shaft surrounded by endless yellow cgi petals rising, the swat team realise they can pull the elevator doors open after all and pull the only remaining survivor out of this situation and shine their gun mounted flashlights in her face for no apparent reason. To end the picture we see Spy Girlfriend sitting in the back of the cop car looking like she's just seen the final cut.
Nice to see that there are some excellent reviews for this movie. Lets just hope they weren't written by people sitting in grey overalls.
Review by gio_mack from the Internet Movie Database.
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