Timeline

Plot synopsis:
Professor Edward Johnston leads an archaeological study of the village of Castelgard near LaRoque Castle in Dordogne, France, the site of the 1357 hanging of Lady Claire, sister to Arnaut de Cervole; her martyrdom led the French to win the Hundred Years War against the English. Johnston's team includes Scottish archaeologist André Marek, Johnston's students Kate Erickson, Josh Stern, and François Dontelle, and his son Chris who is infatuated with Kate. While excavating a nearby monastery, they find a sarcophagus with the remains of a French knight with a lopped ear holding the hand of his lady, an unheard-of practice for the time. Johnston travels to the American headquarters of the ITC Corporation, their sponsor, to question if they have tampered with the site. The students later discover a pair of Johnston's bifocals and a note begging for help, though both date over 600 years old. When they contact ITC, the company invites them to their headquarters.
There, the team is introduced to ITC president Robert Doniger and vice-president Steven Kramer. Doniger reveals that in the process of developing teleportation technology, they locked onto a stable wormhole to 1357 Castlegard. Johnston was invited to see the past for himself but his group has not returned and they want the students to go back in time to locate him. All but Josh volunteer to go. They are stripped of all modern technology save for pendant-shaped markers they can use to initiate their return. The students are joined by a security team include head of security Frank Gordon and two former military men. On arrival in 1357, they find themselves in the path of a young woman chased by English knights; the security men are killed while protecting the group, though one has activated their marker shortly after priming a grenade. When his body arrives in the present, the grenade detonates and shatters much of the teleportation device. Josh aids Kramer to help make repairs.
The team evade the knights, and are led by the woman to the English-controlled Castlegard. They are captured and brought before Lord Oliver de Vannes and his second in command, DeKere. They are stripped of their markers, and de Vannes kills François believing him to be a French spy. The others are imprisoned along with Johnston. They make their escape but are pursued by the English. Gordon and Johnston are recaptured while the others make for the monastery, led by the woman. DeKere reveals himself to Gordon as former ITC employee Decker; he had frequently used the teleportation device but was not told by ITC that each use damaged his DNA until it was too late, and would die on a return trip. He plans revenge on ITC and kills Gordon. De Vannes orders his knights to march on LaRoque castle, and DeKere brings Johnston along.
At the monastery, Marek, Kate, and Chris meet de Cervole, and realize the woman is Lady Claire; they have changed history by saving her. Marek, who has become infatuated with Lady Claire, is given a horse to rescue his friends. Kate and Chris help to swing the upcoming battle in the French's favor by leading de Cervole's men through the monastery tunnels they had previously mapped to the castle. As the battle starts, Marek is captured in his rescue attempt, and Lady Claire is also kidnapped. Marek manages to free himself, Lady Claire and Johnston, while Chris helps de Cervole defeat de Vannes. Enraged, DeKere slashes off Marek's earlobe; Marek realizes he is destined to be the knight in the sarcophagus. He defeats DeKere and recovers the markers, giving them to the others and says his goodbyes as he runs off to help the French assure victory and restore history.
As the three activate their markers, in the present Josh and Kramer have finished the repairs after coming to learn that Doniger has attempted to sabotage their attempts; he fears that when the students' stories become public, ITC will suffer great financial losses. As the machine activates, Doniger races into it, attempting to block the teleportation, but instead he is sent back to 1357, where he is quickly killed on the battleground. Chris, Kate, and Johnston safely return. Later, the team returns to Castlegard and reexamine the sarcophagus, finding that Marek and Lady Claire led a prosperous life after the war and had three children: Christophe, Katherine, and François.

Tags: boring, murder, cult, violence, psychedelic, action, romantic, revenge

Review:
The story boils down to a pretty standard chase and explosion thriller set in the middle ages.Definitely treat yourself to a read of the book the movie is based on.
Paul walker looks fine like Chris but he cannot act; and Frances O'Connor is a fine actress but the role of Kate isn't for her.
The character development of the lead people, and also Doniger, is left behind which took away much taste from the story.Reading the book is more recommended..
And no I am not naive, I know that in any adaptation sacrifices must be made but I feel that because they got a big name to play Chris the centered the movie around him when it is clearly better balanced in the book.
The book itself is not as strong as Jurassic Park or Prey; it reads like an overenthusiastic action thriller movie, which is a bit shallow for a book, but should make a great basis for an overenthusiastic action thriller movie.The movie is rushed, shallow, poorly acted, almost totally dis-joined from the story of the book, and whereas the book stretches credibility at times, the movie totally crushes suspension of disbelief.Crichton's book has well fleshed out, if somewhat annoying characters, more-or-less believable relationships, solid pseudo-physics, solid pseudo-history and at its core a good 'what-if?' story.
An archaeological outfit formed by young students (Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor , Gerard Butler and others) using a time machine go back to ¨100 years war¨ where starring's father (Billy Connolly) before had gone and lost .
Very good cast such as Gerard Butler , though Pierce Brosnan turned down the role of Andre Marek ; in addition , Paul Walker , David Tweliss , Anna Friel and a beautiful Frances O'Connor .
If they had taken a ride in Marty McFly's DeLorean they might have been able to prevent the mistakes in casting and scripting and made something that lives up to the idea's potential.An archeological team led by Professor Edward Johnston (Billy Connolly) is excavating the ruins of Castlegard, site of a medieval battle between the French and the British during the Hundred Year War. Johnston's son Chris (Paul Walker) is visiting, a man not interested in the past but in getting closer to his father's assistant Kate Erikson (Frances O'Connor).Trouble arises when Professor Johnston goes to his benefactor, the International Technology Corporation, to get more funds and information about why they are so interested in Castlegard.
However, there's a catch, the group must collect him in six hours, otherwise they'll be stuck in the 14th century forever.The movie could have been great had the filmmakers taken more time to examine its premise, but as it stands the plot is just mechanical.
It adds up to a boring action movie, and boring is one thing an action movie should never be.It's also funny to see a film so selective about being authentic, such as making it a point that modern people should not carry modern equipment with them to influence history, but having medieval characters speak modern versions of English and French.
His character stays behind in the present and comes off as the "self-righteous scientist" who squares off against Thewlis' heartless business man, a typical feature of this movie type.Director Richard Donner once made great movies like "Superman" and "Lethal Weapon" but can't rescue this mess.
The camerawork and set design are both excellent though, and belong in a better movie.Like most stories by Michael Crichton, "Timeline" makes scientists into noble humanitarians and corporate heads into greedy slime to create artificial drama, and it comes off as exploitive pabulum that detracts from where the attention should be, on the action.Since the action isn't good, what's left is a story where the heroes cry, complain and act selfishly while the movie tries to convince us that they're intriguing characters we should care about.
But they changed entire genders of people, removed some more interesting moments, changed character relationships slightly, and totally bombed at all the stuff dealing with the ITC, time travel and the vileness of both bad guys.If you have read the book and seen the movie, you know what I am talking about.
One of Donnigers right hand men is supposed to be a woman, Chris is NOT the professors son (in the book he is father figure), the French guy that gets killed in the movie does not exist in the book, Marek is supposed to be fluent in all aspects of time period including the languages.
So, I would suggest you watch this movie before you read the book, otherwise the lack of "fanta-realism" and the differences between book & movie will be too irritating.Some people blame the fact that you have to put a 300 pages book into a 2 hour film, but Jurassic Park did fine and, thou the theme is totally different, the writing / plot style is pretty the same.
Saturday morning cartoon villains have clearer motivation than this movie's bad guys, or good guys for that matter.The plot is no help - the movie spends so much time in gratuitous slaughter that important events - such as when key characters make decisions that place them in circumstances central to the story - are missed completely.As a consolation, the action sequences in the last 20 minutes or so are visually appealing, which makes the movie's end look good by comparison to the rest.If you are a fanatical Michael Crichton fan or if you are into movies with lots of medieval sword fighting action, this flick is worth watching; otherwise you will do better spending your time elsewhere..
I emplore you, find something else to watch and if you feel the need to hear the story, read the book, it doesn't take any longer than the movie, but it, at least, is worthwhile..
There were new characters, sex changes, and a huge hole in the explanation of the technology, and big gaps in the plot.I think if the movie was a SciFi Original, I would have liked it better.
This film is one of the worst book to movie adaptations of all time.
Don't bother seeing the film, but look for Butler in other things that have such crutial elements as a plot, acting and a script..
But even the Kate's sketchy character beats Lady Claire, who looks like a French peasant throughout the film and shows no particularly quality that would explain Marek's devotion to her.
Richard Donner's "Timeline", based on the novel by popular author Michael Crichton, is terribly old fashioned and seems out of place in these current times.
This action/adventure movie is mildly entertaining, eventhough it deals with the notion of time travel which has always been an interesting subject for cinema.A powerful technological corporation creates a machine that can transport physical objects through space from one location to another.
The book "Timeline" (or "Tijdlijn" in Dutch) is a very entertaining novel about the concept of traveling through time and a large company known as ITC trying to make money out of it.
And whatever you do, don't let Chris get too close to her (in the book it was Chris who met Lady Claire first and falls in love with her, but she liked Marek more)Then the characters: the talents of Billy Connolly (Edward Jones), David Thewlis (Robert Doniger) and Frances O'Connor (Kate Ericson) are totally wasted.
Oh my goodness, I wanted to read the book before I watched the movie, and the whole idea of the the book was distorted, it could have been so so so so so so so so so so much cooler if they had just stuck to the story line of the book, regardless of the bad acting, the characters themselves might have made up for them.
There's a lot of "hey, Mom, check out this special effect!" but the movie never decides if it wants to be action, adventure, a period piece, a romance, or a man vs society conflict.Part of what's dragging it down isn't the acting, nor the actors, but the godawful cheesy dialogue and poor plotting.
Walker suffers from what I call "Reeves Disease" where no one bothers to make him act, since the pretty face is all they've hired.Frances O'Connor is the token female, in a movie with only one other female character.
I do think it was amusing that Timeline was obviously filmed before "Freedom Fries", since the French are the heroes.The love stories are clunky, and weigh down the action, once again upholding the Hollywood idea that you can fall in love with someone you've seen for a sum total of 47 minutes in your life, throwing your whole existence away to be with that person.I was sorry it wasn't a better movie, or even still, a worse one.
Allegedly, because although it shares the original's storyline of modern archaeologists being dropped into 14th century France, it does away with a lot of the original - changes characters around, makes several female characters male, and removes the plot hole of the original whereby it was supposed to be a parallel world rather than time travel, but that can't work because if the marooned-in-the-past Professor leaves a note for his students in the present day then it has to be time travel.
In the film it's time travel and like it.I can't remember anyone who was in it except Billy Connolly, and I suspect that was because Sean Connery and Robbie Coltrane both turned it down with a look of disgust.The film is also pretty much one long fight, without any of the nuances of the 14th century world that Crichton put into his book - and doesn't make sense time and again.
It's too bad, this is a movie I walked out of thinking "What could have been?" So many ideas are thrown out there, but Donner does not trust it, and instead has a semi-cool looking night time battle scene at the end.
The idea that people from 700 years apart speak the same forms of English and French seemed a bit much for me, but what do I know?PS-After reading the book Timeline, I am even more disappointed in this movie.
For a fuller understanding of the movie, and for a much more interesting action story, just read the book Timeline, and skip the movie.
And then the film came, which was a nightmare of poor acting, with a script written by someone who clearly had not read the book properly and seemed to be just one long (yawn) chase from beginning to end.
A team of them, including his son (Walker) and his would-be girlfriend (O' Connor) decide to take the dangerous trip into time too, and rescue him.The story is full of inconsistencies, which although can be permitted up to a point in a sci-fi film in general, they definitely exceed any tolerance level in this one.
For those who read the book by Michael Crichton, the movie will probably be a disappointment.
The movie tries to create him as something special, but he actually isn't (read the excellent Michael Crichton novel)!This movie is pure film-flam and deserves the virtually universal poor ratings it gets.
The movie was great, a new spin on going back in time, cast was varied and good story line.
Those of you who actually liked the movie should really read the book.
But, that is neither here nor there because true to Crichton's book, it is all just an excuse to manipulate a time-travel actioner.Woeful production values and direction further hinder this unbelievable farce, causing it to appear to be a lackluster made-for-TV movie with budget concerns.
Once the modern day preamble is over the film is set around the battles and hatred between the English and the french in the 14th century (with a little rescue story thrown in for good luck)Gerard Butler was the only saving grace this movie had Billy Connelly felt tacked on to me, to be honest his character could have been played by anyone he was wasted.
The costumes and sets evidently got a lot of attention and are the strongest aspect to this film - they did look pretty good - but there are "Star Trek" episodes that make more sense than this.Apparently it's pretty hard to make a good movie out of a Crichton novel...
if you have read the book.But there are some points that are really, really bad and make "Timeline" less than an average popcorn flick.First of all, the acting is bad, the worst performance being the one of Frances O'Connor.
The book itself is wonderful, the plot development and character development is (as always) top notch, after all it was a NY Times Bestseller.This film, is by far not a contender for any awards other than a razzie for worst screen adaptation.
How anyone can turn a wonderful book into such a mindless roller-coaster ride, devoid of discernible plot, and character development is beyond me.If you looking for two hours of mindless fun, this would be something to rent, however if your looking for a movie that is worth watching or owning, then pass on this and spend the money on the novel instead.
After commenting on the impossibility of this for several minutes, Johnston's son Chris (Paul Walker) and assistants Marek (Gerard Butler) and Kate (Frances O'Connor) also go to New Mexico, where they are assured that time travel is possible, their mentor is trapped in the Hundred Years War, and they have to go back and find him.All this is just a set up to a string of action sequences where various characters run away, get captured, escape, get separated, are presumed dead, and reuinited, while the audience sits and waits for reasons why we should care.
It's based on a book by the great Michael Crichton, and centers around what is one of the most fascinating and enjoyable premises out there: time travel.
Timeline, starring the late Paul Walker and Gerard Butler, and featuring a large and talented supporting cast, is an underrated film based on a very underrated book by sci-thriller master, the late Michael Crichton.This was always going to be a tricky film to make because the book's story is based on the sci-fi premise of time travel.
The film preserves most of Crichton's brilliant plot--a tech firm in the American desert is trying to invent teleportation but stumbles into a wormhole that only sends the transported back in time to the year 1375 and a village in France during the brutal 100 Years' War.The actors making up the principle groups of story characters, the oily and secretive tech guys, the erstwhile archaeology students who get caught up in the tech guys' invention, and the, of course, late medieval English and French combatants the first two groups both travel back in time to encounter, are well-cast and well--directed by Richard Donner.
Most Crichton fans have never heard of or read Timeline, and most Richard Donner, Paul Walker, and Gerard Butler fans have never seen this very solid little 2003 film.
The movie is a poor interpretation of a phenomenal book and does little to translate the reality of the main characters to film.
I want to know at least a little more about the people before we get into the action.While I really like the Paul Walker persona in some of his macho films, he looks really young here and comes off as kind of dorky.
If you have read the book and seen the movie, you know what I am talking about.
However, one can certainly sense the loss of plot.The movie is okay as an adventure/time travel film, if you simply like chases, stuff blowing up, fighting, etc.
Indeed there is probably way too much action, and not enough dialog or plot development.Even without having read the book, I felt while watching the film that the pointer scene was extremely rushed, empty, and unsatisfying.
However, my word of advice to the very talented Mr. Butler, should in the future, your agent books you for another movie with Paul Walker or even Frances Conner, FIRE YOUR AGENT AND GET ANOTHER MANAGER and RUN AWAY LIKE HELL FROM THESE ACTORS!
You could, but you really wouldn't want to.The Michael Crichton's novel ''Timeline'' was not well served by this screenplay that tells of scientists that travel back to 1357.The movies was painfully long and there was no chemistry between the love interests.Andre (Gerard Butler) and Lady Clare (Anna Friel) went from how do you do to commitment in record time.
Some of the peripheral character actors were good, as were some of the battle scenes, but Mr.Butler's portrayal of Marek saved the movie, as far as I am concerned.
The film was well acted and had the potential to be very good but the characters were flat and the excitement from the book was completely missing..
Timeline is my least favorite of Michael Crichton's projects, and, more objectively, probably his worst film.A group of archaeologists obsessed with medieval France find themselves connected to a corporation experimenting with time travel, and must go back to rescue one of their number from the very period they are studying.
I didn't read the book, but no comparison is needed to notice it's a poor movie.First if you expect some interesting sci-fi story about time travel, don't bother.
Normally, I wouldn't bother slamming a movie as bad as this one, but having just read the book, which I felt was one of Michael Crichton's better novels, I was immensely let down by this wretched film adaptation.
If it would have been a pure middle age movie it would be still as boring as it is, maybe you wouldn't be bothered with questions coming to your mind why the whole plot makes no sense, what was there first, the story or the filmed material.