UrbanWire

Timeline
Opens March 3

Cast: Paul Walker, Frances O' Connor, Gerard Butler
Director: Richard Donner

Turn Back Time

By Sterling Wong · UrbanWire
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It's funny how the film, if you haven't guessed from the title by now, is about time travelling when that's what I'd like to do after having caught the show - to get back the 2 hours I irrevocably lost.

Adapted from Michael Crichton's novel of the same title (which means the movie can go 2 ways: Jurassic Park or Congo), Timeline tells the story of Chris (Paul Walker), who's accompanying his dad, Professor Edward Johnston (Billy Connolly), and his group of young archaeologists who are in Castlegaard, France, digging at the site of a famous battle between the English and the French in 1357.

Mysteriously, Johnston disappears and Chris, together with Kate (Frances O' Connor), the professor's protégé, and Marek (Gerard Butler), his assistant, discover his reading glasses inside a recently excavated underground parlour, with a note that reads, "help me".

This sets them off to the headquarters of a mysterious corporation named ITC, which has been funding their research. They learn there that ITC has discovered a way to go back in time and the professor has been sent back to 14th century France, though for what reason we can only guess, and now he's trapped there. Hence, with an ITC employee who acts as their guide, they travel back in time to save the professor.

And so the medieval adventure begins, as they enter right on the cusp of a siege on an English-occupied castle by the French and are caught in the crossfire. Meanwhile, back at ITC, we learn that the time travelling technology hasn't been perfected and there're flaws that cause the DNA alignment of people to destabilise (don't worry, I didn't get it either). Also, the time travel machine is destroyed due to plot contrivance, leaving the destinies of our time travelling archaeologist heroes up in the air.

Timeline has plot holes so pompously irrelevant, it would take a whole film's worth of pseudo-intellectual sci-fi mumbo-jumbo to cover them. For example, Marek worries that by unwittingly helping a French girl to escape the English soldiers (believe it or not, this American film casts the French as heroes), he has possibly altered the future. Then, he and the rest of the modern people go around killing soldiers, as if that wouldn't change the future.

As if to go along with the spectacularly confusing plot, the actors here are lost as well. A cardboard cut-out could have easily replaced Walker (2 Fast 2 Furious) as both share the same number of facial expressions. Then again, you can't really blame him, as the script only requires him to say "come on!" and "let's go!" umpteen times.

Billy Connolly and Frances O' Connor, both solid actors, are wasted in their respective roles as a Scottish caricature and the requisite love interest. Other characters die along the way but we don't really care. The only standout role is that of Marek. Butler is masculine and virile in his portrayal of the strong Marek, who, get this, falls in love with a French noble in just a day and decides to remain in 14th century France instead of going home.

However, all isn't lost for the film. The dialogue is so bad that it often becomes unintentionally hilarious. The climatic battle between the French and the English is also rather awe-inspiring, with the scenes of the French launching their trebuchets, which basically hurl large stones into the English castles, being the highlight of the show.

Unfortunately, that isn't nearly enough to compensate for the non-acting and non-event mess that Timeline is. It's a real shame because the premises of time travelling and its effects and modern people interacting with people of another era sound promising but Timeline chooses to go down the safe action-adventure route instead. Even then, it is mediocre. Only recommended for big, big fans of Paul Walker.