In the film version of Michael Crichton's short book Timeline Paul Walker plays Chris, an archaeologist on a dig where a 600 year old help note is discovered in his fathers handwriting. The note is genuine, and as it turns out a new teleportation machine has got mixed up with a worm hole and can now Fax people into the past. That expression that is used once or twice in the book gets overused to laughable extents in the film. Of course Chris and his bunch of theoretical mates are the only ones to travel back and find him, but they only have a few hours before they get stuck there forever. At the exact same time a major battle that destroys the city is about to break out.

Of all the faults in the film, the worst had to be the casting. Paul Walker as an archaeologist! What next Keanu Reeves as Einstein? They get around this by making him the professor's son, but all this does is allow Walker to play the role, of what was once a moderately intelligent lad, as the rejected member of Bill And Ted's team. His love interest Kate is played by Frances O'Connor (who did so well in A.I) but feels bland and out of place on an archaeological expedition, and feels like she'd be more at home out-drinking the lads in a bar. Billy Connolly does OK as the professor though, he's not exactly what I imagined but I can respect him for his humorous approach. Gerard Butler is the only really good actor though. He has a similar look to Vigo Mortensen in Lord Of The Rings, and manages to provide the eye candy for the ladies, while remaining believable as an intelligent researcher with keen interests in the past.

Whoever wrote the script should be shot! Crichton had already written the book with a film in mind, and as such had crafted a short but sweet tale, with a quick overview of the scientific theory and a lot of extended action scenes. It would have been easy to turn that into an action movie of decent 2-2.5 hour length, with minimal cuts, but apparently the script writers know better. With this film they have reduced key characters to walking cliches. Worst of all was Lady Claire, a character who used to be a strong willed woman who disguised herself as a man to spy on the English, now is a case of Marek sees she's a woman, instantly falls in love and rescues her, the end. Other major, and interesting characters have been left out entirely, and their replacements are as bland as you could imagine.

What's even worse is the central story that has been used. There is no interesting ideas in the time travel, none of the books parallel dimension explanation, which worked so long as you kept throwing in more dimensions, and no sense of mystery. All the things that were hidden in the book, are revealed from the start, and as such none of the film contains any surprise. Unless of course you're surpised when Kate asks what kind of SOB would destroy a stone carving, and she turns out to do it. That is about the height of the films surprises, which I would hope everyone agrees is not good.

The action scenes are the weird part though. If they wanted a mindless action blockbuster then why did they not have some decent action. The budget is so low on the film that they had to save their money for the cardboard sets and small explosions of the finale, with nothing more spectacular than a person running through the woods for the main body. Whereas the book had strong, realistic action scenes akin to Gladiator, the film features some PG13 violence that is neither intense, realistic or believable.

This has been my entry into the Lean-N-Mean write-off.

Recommended: No