When this Butterfly Flaps It's Wings, You Will Truelly Feel the Effect!

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2007)

One of my all time favourite truly underrated gems, that deserved much better reviews than it got. Nothing in 2004 came close to this effort.
It was the best movie I'd seen in along time. The only movie I've seen in a long time that I actually had wanted to see more than once at the cinemas. There was a real heart to this movie, I really identified with the main character, Evan Treborn's quite personality and his reactions to crazy situations he finds himself in (with the exception of the painful past...and the supernatural element of course ) You really bare witness to this character's coming of age journey through this movie. You see his mistakes and watch him have to grow as a person and learn more about responsibilities as he screws with his time-line again and again forcing himself to learn some serious lessons in the process. I loved how he made all the same sort of mistakes that I or anyone else would probably make in that sort of insane situation and that he couldn't just figure it all out by the end, that they're were no easy answers, no case of a puzzle to be solved...you simply can't play god. It merely comes down to making the first choice that wouldn't benefit himself, there by demonstrating personal sacrifice.
I found the somewhat implications of brain damage if the time travel gets too excessive or reckless in use a very believable side effect to having such a gift. It made more sense to see him having to take risks and it being a painful process and having more at stake to loose than if he were capable of time travelling too easily or having no limitations to it.
The trailers could easily fool someone into thinking it's just another teenybopper or slasher type rubbish, as it did with my big brother but once you've seen it, it's not at all what you might think. This actually had some of the balls yest moves I've ever seen. A Deeply creative and innovative effort, featuring a near entire gauntlet of the not so pleasant aspects of real life horrors. It's genuinely shocking in it's realistic feeling use of violence and it created a hell of an audience reaction in my cinema showing. Not often had I experienced an audience that was gripped in the palm of a movie's hands as this was. The collective gasps at big moments was so spot on, it must have been a filmmakers wet dream. We're not talking typical Hollywood glorified violence, but rather the kind thats so suggestive in it's impact, it makes the most hardened of viewers cringe despite it being fictional characters. Just an unbelievable experience. Ain't pretty, not for the faint of heart, put the teenyboppers to bed folks.
The acting across the board faced quite the challenge too boot, with all sorts of different alternate versions of their characters to sink their teeth into. And all in my humble opinion rises to it as best they could with strong results all round. The kids were probably faced with the biggest mountain to climb. It being such heavy material and there being a curse on working with children but incredibly the casting gods so fit to shine down on the team with performances that arguably gave the adults a run for their money. Hell I actually found the kids playing one of the most psychotic child's I've seen in film, the Tommy character more effective than their adult counter part. Both the said Tommy character and his sicko father, a perfectly slimy revamp of former 80's heartthrob Eric Stoltz made for two truly disturbing Villains. While at it's core, under all the grittiness does lie a love story, lending a greater sense of presence to Amy Smart whom makes an admirable effort at breaking your hearts. And I can't say enough about how much I loved that they had the guts to go with a meatier ending rather than the obvious one everyone has to be expecting.
Finally Ashton Kutcher blew me away in his first dramatic performance with one hell of an Ernest showing. He has his odd morbidly funny moments but overall comes off a lot better than his critics would expect. I actually hadn't been predisposed to him as much as his adoring public who would like his blood, before seeing the movie. So I went in only knowing the name a little. I didn't go in with the baggage of knowing him as ' Mr. Demi Moore' or 'That annoying lanky prick who keeps punking people.' I merely went in knowing him as 'that guy from the 70's show' and had mercifully forgotten 'Dude Where's my car?' He ain't the greatest actor I've ever seen but he got the job done on this one and pulled off a hell of an endearing performance and I really digged the big black beard as well which helped with the image change.
Whether you like or don't like aside, props gotta go out to such an effort at something new and genuinely challenging.
Highly recommended.