As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for time travel films.
And I’ll confess I rather like Out of Time. It really doesn’t break any new ground, or play any dazzling games with time paradoxes, but it is a solid thriller, much like a Time Travel version of that old cult favorite, The Hidden.
A trio of body-hopping aliens escape from a secret holding facility in 1951 through a time portal and plan to destroy our world. Fortunately, Cooper, one of the Agents, follows them through the portal, even though he knows he’ll only have a few days to live once he gets to the future. He teams up with Lisa, a tough young detective, who’s just dumped her policeman boyfriend, to hunt them down before they can contact the rest of their kind and take over our planet.
There’s a touch of the old fish-out-of-water story (although not much: as Cooper points out, he didn’t have much trouble once he figured out how to open the cigarette packs), and it’s a bit like The Philadelphia Experiment. There’s a bit of humor, particularly with the aliens — although not too much — and a strong buddy cop relationship between Cooper and Lisa which never quite turns into a romance. Along the way, we get a few surprising revelations (and yes, it is pretty obvious they’re setting something up with the missing persons case at the beginning), some tough questions about trust, and the inevitable question of whether our time traveler is making it all up.
I’m sure, though, for those of you who’ve seen The Hidden, that it will come as little surprise if I tell you that the effects are minimal. But then, that’s the way it should be.
It’s not Earth-shattering, or epic. It’s just a well-made thriller with likable characters, good performances by the leads, and a Science Fiction twist or two.
And believe me, those are a lot rarer than you think they are.
So if you want to spend Ninety minutes playing cops and aliens, this is a fun and enjoyable way to do it.
You don’t even need a suit, tie and Fedora.
Although it might help.
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Good review. I liked this film also, and I too am a sucker for time travel movies . You hit the nail on the head with the phrase “likeable characters”. As we were watching, my husband noted that there are a lot of B-movies with low budgets and simple special effects being made these days, and I agreed. We both thought though that many of them have no heart: they are cold, they don’t establish characters, and so without the “help” of familiar faces on actors it’s hard to get any feeling for the good guys as well as the bad guys. This one had heart. And humor. It was a surprisingly feel-good cops and robbers flick with an SF twist.
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