Skip to main content

Timeline -- a review


Fifteen years ago Timeline hit the movie screens. Based on the novel of the same name by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, Timeline dealt with a group of archeologists working a castle ruin site in present day France where the French overthrew the English occupying force back in the 1300s. When the leader of the expedition (Billy Connoly) starts getting suspicious about his backers--who keep giving them amazing tips on where to find things that nobody could know the location of--he goes back to the US to speak with them. After his father has been gone without a trace for several days, the expedition leader’s son Chris (Paul Walker) calls the backers to demand to know the whereabouts of his father.

Chris travels to the headquarters of the expedition’s backers, which is a tech company that has managed to invent a time machine. This was how they were able to give the expedition in France such good tips, because they traveled back in time to the actual battle in the 1300s. It’s explained that they didn’t so much invent a time machine but rather they discovered a fixed wormhole that stretches back to only this specific time and place. The company had sent teams back in time, dressed in the period clothing, to explore the era. The problem for Chris is that his father demanded to travel back in time, and wound up getting lost there.



And so Chris, Kate (Frances O’Connor), Marek (Gerard Butler), François (Rossif Sutherland), and Frank (Neal McDonough) form a rescue team to go back in the past to medieval France to bring back Billy Connoly. What could possibly go wrong?


Michael Crichton’s novel was rich in both history as well as scientific theory. When you went back in time with the crew in the book, Crichton really made you feel like you were in 1300s France. And it wasn’t a romanticized version, either, but rather a gritty, down to earth look at life in the mud--which was what most people back then had to deal with. Tyranny was everywhere, mainly in the form of English troops barking orders to the downtrodden. Through his sharp description of realistic medieval times and people, Crichton excelled at making the reader extremely grateful to be living in these modern times.



Director Richard Donner (the 1978 Superman, the Lethal Weapon films) does a good job at compressing most of the book’s sprawling narrative, while still keeping important exposition. The problem is that the story comes off as being a little rushed at times, with people shouting much-needed exposition at each other just before running for their lives from knights on horseback who are trying to run them through. Donner was required to recut his film several times to please the studio, so that may explain the rushed pacing, especially in the first half.

Still, despite its flaws, I enjoy Timeline very much. It remains a fun romp; a good popcorn film, if nothing else. And the film still holds up very well in spite of it now being fifteen years old. It should have broad appeal for fans of science fiction and historical stories--as well as frequent visitors to renaissance fairs (both the film and renaissance fairs share the same aspect: they have the theme of modern day people mingling with those in the medieval past). Timeline would be the penultimate movie in Richard Donner’s long and storied career with 16 Blocks being the last film he directed thus far.



Paul Walker went on to greater fame as the star of the Fast and the Furious films, until his untimely death in a car crash in 2013. Gerard Butler would also go on to bigger things, like 300, Olympus Has Fallen, and London Has Fallen. Frances O’Connor has also kept busy, starring in Mr. Selfridge, The Conjuring 2, and Cleverman over the years. Billy Connoly has also kept working, starring in X-Files: I Want To Believe, Brave, and The Hobbitt: The Battle of the Five Armies. And the villainous Lord Oliver in this film was played by Michael Sheen, who went on to star in Underworld (released the same year as Timeline), Frost/Nixon, along with the recent Passengers.

Some interesting tidbits: although they had no scenes together in the film, David Thewlis (who played Doniger) and Anna Friel (the Lady Claire) fell in love during the shooting and have remained together ever since. And the late Michael Crichton reportedly hated the movie version of Timeline so much that he stopped offering his books for sale to the studios. --SF


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jack Reacher Never Go Back -- a Review

I was first introduced to Jack Reacher through the Tom Cruise movie of the same name that was released back in 2012. I liked the movie well enough, despite a few nitpicks here and there--but I really enjoyed reading the novels by Lee Child. Jack Reacher was a former US Army officer who retires and becomes a drifter, roaming from state to state in the country that he fought so hard to protect. And Reacher is still protecting us, taking on a variety of villains, from backwoods mobsters to big-city terrorists from book to book. The stories in the books are well-told, with great attention paid to the smallest of details. I think of them as 1980s action films, only without being insulting to your intelligence. What a perfect series to adapt to movies, right? Well, Tom Cruise looks nothing like how Jack Reacher is described in the books. And while I thought the first Jack Reacher film was good, the second, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , is very badly flawed. Based on the JR novel of the sa...
Post a Comment
Read more

3 Body Problem

3 Body Problem , Netflix’s latest TV series, is loosely based on the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, by Chinese author Liu Cixin (who also wrote the book The Wandering Earth ). Simply put, it’s an alien invasion story, but one that’s a lot more sophisticated than your average ‘pew-pew-pew’ cliché-fest. For one thing, this series begins in the 1960s, in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, which was the nationwide purge instigated within China by then-Chairman Mao to keep himself in power. A young woman named Ye Wenjie arises from the chaos to become a central figure in the overall story. The 3 Body Problem of this series’ name refers to a far-flung solar system that has three suns. Any planet within this tri-sun system would have a hard time of it, taking turns orbiting one belligerent sun after another, and it just so happens that the aliens who set their eyes on invading Earth--known as the San-Ti--come from this embattled world. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Holdovers -- a review

It’s always a joy to watch someone who’s a master at their work, whether it’s a musician, an artist, or an actor. Most great actors make it look easy--which is not to say that I think acting is an easy job. I know from personal experience that acting is very hard. It’s a skill that the talented make look very easy, and one of the most talented actors working today is Paul Giamatti. If you’ve watched some movies over the past few years, chances are very good that you’ve already seen Paul Giamatti. He was the jittery earthquake expert in San Andreas , the sympathetic police chief in The Illusionist , and as the titular John Adams (a part that got him the Emmy and a Golden Globe) in the 2008 HBO series of the same name. Recently, I saw Paul Giamatti in the superb The Holdovers , a movie that I wasn’t planning on writing up, but I kept thinking about it--and all of its characters--long after I saw it. In The Holdovers , Giamatti plays Paul H...
Post a Comment
Read more