Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tunenut (A) on April 18, 2011 at 18:44:49

I finally got a chance to see this. It brought many references to mind- there was an old Twilight Zone episode "A Stop at Willoughby," "Groundhog Day," "Strangers on a Train," and of course the recent reality twister "Inception." At a taut 1 1/2 hours, this is considerably leaner than Inception, and it moves right along.

This falls squarely into the category of scientific doubletalk underlying semi-miraculous technology. "Quantum physics, parabolic calculus," then when more details are requested, the idea that even a dead brain retains the data from the past 8 minutes and somehow these guys figured out how to download that and insert a living person into that "source code," to relive the final 8 minutes of the person's life.

Well, anytime someone goes into the past and starts messing around, paradoxes start to crop up and (no spoilers) this movie has some whoppers after it is all said and done. And I think there's actually more to chew on than Inception.

It may be just that I was in the mood for time travel sci-fi, but this carried me through every twist and turn, with even a bit of emotional resonance when this odd sort of love starts to bloom in disconnected pre-death encounters. I liked Jake much more than the last thing I saw him in, Love and Other Drugs, and the rest of the cast does a fine job. But acting isn't really the point- the point is this convoluted idea that you can go back and change the source code but you can't change the real world- but what does that mean?