Chaos and Time-travel(may contain spoilers)

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2004)

It is always hit or miss with time-travel movies. Either they hit it spot on as in Star Trek 4 or it misses as in T-3:Rise of the Machines. Now add in the complexity of the Chaos Theory and you have a premise for an interesting movie to say the least. The movie opens near the end and gos back to the beginning, a device that seems to me to becoming increasingly common in movies today. After the opening sequence, we are treated to a series of small episodes setting up the blackouts that must be corrected. The worse moments of the blackouts are, of course, blacked out. We don't see what really happened until later on in the movie, when Ashton's character tries to change things. My reaction to this movie was strange to say the least. This movie takes Donnie Darco to a whole new level. The performances were amazing, but I felt Ashton was a little flat at times, sometimes going back into his persona on Punk'd. Amy Smart an Ethan Suplee on the other hand gave amazing performances. I walked away thinking this was one of the better movies to come out dealing with a difficult subject to write about. Instead of having the audience remain blissfully ignorant of the inherent paradoxes in time travel, we are taken on a ride to see what would happen if we were able to go back and change the past. Bottom line: 8/10