Zippy, snappy and thoroughly enjoyable second sequel which reminds us of how good American produced/English-language franchises can be.

Rating: 7/10 (19 October 2011)

I think we'd all be lying if we said we didn't sit through the final few shots of Back to the Future: Part III and didn't necessarily 'feel' something sad or melancholy wash over us. The conclusion to what has to go down as one of the best film trilogies of all time, a sentiment made even more prominent following recent additions to the respective Terminator and Die Hard franchises, carries with it an uplifting air of pomp and conclusion juxtaposed with a sense of heartbreak in that the only way to experience time travelling adventures with these characters, whom we love a great deal, is to sit through a rerun. There is genuine heart to proceedings here, and we sense the director, a certain Robert Zemeckis, of whom has been responsible for some great work over the years, is genuinely trying new things and attempting to push the franchise down different routes. What isn't happening is what often occurs with certain other sequels belonging to certain other franchises; that is to say, simulacrum-imbued romps of previous entries following that same lead character, of whom was never particularly interesting in the first place, trudging through the same locations and doing the same act with nothing registering and not much of it particularly interesting.
The film continues the adventures of Marty McFly, but it veers more away to his faithful partner in time, Emmett "Doc" Brown, in the fashion the last entry alluded it would: Doc's favourite ever era in history was "the old West", while at one point in Part II, he stated his intent to dismantle the confounded time machine built out of a Delorean and focus his attentions on the "one other mystery of the universe: women(!)". We begin in 1955, and following events of the second film, Marty crash-lands back into Doc Brown's world; he of whom is only just recovering from the events of the very first film. Marty still has that letter from the end of Part II, a letter addressed to him from Doc although written in 1885 having spent several decades with a courier company. It's worth pointing out that the incarnation of Doc that is trapped in 1885 is he of the year 1985, and as you watch and struggle to sync it all up to see if it makes sense, one must battle the wave of nostalgia washing over one on top of listening and working it all out. Blowing up the entrance to an old mine near a graveyard, so that Marty may travel back to the 80's, they stumble across no ordinary grave: Doc's grave from the nineteenth century, and they take it upon themselves to alter the plan by sending Marty back to save him.
When Marty arrives back, it is as magical as it is when he respectively crash lands into both the 50's and the 2010's; that trademark-of-the-series crane shot over the town-general is like a friend of old rearing up after not having previously seen them for several years, whilst the gag about encountering his "mother" (or a descendant of his mother) very early on after travelling is still funny. Initially, Marty struggles; falling afoul of his untamed Western surroundings by very nearly coming a cropper to the local wildlife, natives and the soiled water a nearby rancher gives him. There is some early, if unwelcome, instances of humour revolving around a baby urinating on him and his treading in horse manure, but the general idea is he's ill-suited to his surroundings. The Tannen's are back, Thomas F. Wilson returns as an incarnation of what is arguably the most famous school bully that's ever been put to film; here playing Buford, an ancestor of Biff and Griff et al. and a gunslinger whose reputation is built up through still images and newspaper reports prior to his arrival on screen. When he does arrive, the first we see of him is his holstered pistol filling the screen as he walks through a saloon door, thus inferring the danger and the sense of conflict synonymous with him.
Where it is established Doc has but a few days left to live, complications in their plan to save both of them arises when Clara Clayton (Steenburgen) bursts onto the scene; a woman destined by history to perish over the side of a cliff but saved by Doc, in what is an event which alters both history as well as Doc's life. Their coming together is the aforementioned wholesome substance, while providing with Doc with as much of the limelight as McFly is good value. Back to the Future: Part III works through its sense of there constantly being something at stake - we are aware of what the characters have to do, that is to say, something wholly scientific that is yet to have been tried which unfolds in a pre-modern era. If we look back upon this third Back to the Future film, and to a degree the second one as well, with a differing sense of fondness, then it is because that sense of the fire still going as a mainstream franchise hits its third film has all but dissipated from series of the more recent times. We enjoy the places the film take us; specifically, its covering of two people coming to form a relationship away from the core dynamic of McFly and Doc - if there were criticisms directed at the second film for thrashing around too much as it travelled and darted through time, then this is the entry that is grounded in one place and burns slowly as two characters come together and connect. As a result, we are required to hark back to films such as these made at a time when you actually felt filmmakers were trying new things and were out to enthrall as well as touch emotions, rather than proceed with a going through of the motions.