Customer Reviews

Retroactive

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This movie doesn't rely on spectacular special effects, outrageous creatures, computer generated universes or even a huge cast of super star talent. What makes it a great flick is the superb job done on the script and the great acting done by both leads. An unbelievable premise (time travel) is made secondary to the plot and dialogue so that it doesn't become a hindrance to the story line.

Belushi's character is very believable as an evil villain and this is probably his best performance. Travis plays a hostage negotiator that is taking time off from her stressful job because she has just botched an incident and is trying to recuperate from the trial.

Along comes Belushi playing a loud mouth abusive bore and the action starts. They tangle and Travis stumbles into a test lab where time travel experiments are being conducted. Instead of being killed by the bad guy she is sent back to where they first meet and is given a second chance at resolving the conflict. She is now the ultimate negotiator as she has some degree of knowledge of the future and can use that knowledge to affect the outcome. Of course she screws up and makes it worse and there lies the beauty of the movie.

I am torn between giving this movie a four or a five, it is a really well written and acted and can be watched more than once, but it does lack enough to not be called a blockbuster type movie. If I could give it four and a half I would. Highly recommend if you like sci fi, time travel or just plain well written scripts.

The flick stars James Belushi as Frank, a psycotic killer with violent mean streak & temper, Kylie Travis, a semi-big star then from the UK, as Karen, a psychologist from Michigan who becomes hostage negotiator, & Shannon Whirry as Rayanne, Frank's ex who is killed brutally. It also features Frank Whaley as Brian, a young & handsome scientist who just perfected a time machine & Roger Clinton as a truck driver.
Karen has a flat tire, so she pulls over by the side of the road & gets picked up by Frank & Rayanne. Frank immediately stars to spook Karen by getting pissed off over little things. Rayanne tells him to calm down & get over it, but Frank doesn't listen to her. He picks up a gun after some tense dialog, Rayanne says she's gonna be killed by him, he fires it & kills her. Frank pulls over some time later on & Karen escapes to a lab where Brian is at.
Karen introduces herself to Brian & says she needs some help. Brian, after then, reveals his time machine to her. She goes into the machine & sets the time back to a couple of hours ago. Instead of fixing the problem she relives the same scenario as before except of course, things are more out of hand & unpredictable now. Frank on the 2nd time to the lab, pulls over his car & chases her with gun, but doesn't pursue her to the lab. She goes back into the machine again & tries it again. This time, things seem to be all right until she relives the same scenario over again. It takes her 3 or 4 times to get it right, on her final attempt, Frank chases her into the lab, & threatens to kill everybody if she doesn't come back to him. The time when she gets it right, she kills Frank & drives off into the sunset behind the wheel of his car.
It has some decent acting, but nothing too memorable. A lot of the dialog is fairly good, but some is really lame for sci-fi action. The special effects are really good & shine in this flick. The camerawork is good, as is the directing. I din't care for the music too much, it wasn't too bad, but just seemed out of place for the movie.
Grade: 6 out of 10.
Run time: 91 minutes.
Rated R for language & violence.

This has been a favorite of mine since the second time I saw it. Not that I did not like it the first time; I had seen it on cable but could not remember the name until I came across a used copy about 4 years later. I have since watched it several times and always enjoy it. Kylie Travis plays a police negotiator who had failed in an attempt to negotiate the release of five hostages and instead are killed in an explosion (this preludes the movie in a flashback sequence). After she runs her car off the road because her mind is on the hostage incident, she is picked up by a couple played by Jim Belushi and Shannon Whirry. Jim Belushi is a loudmouth, over copensating, gun toting redneck (and those are his good qualities) transporting stolen computer chips and Shannon Whirry is quite abused by him. What follows is a car-ride that ends in murder and a chance happening across a time-machine in a secret government sponsored lab. This gives way to repeat the car-ride and incidents which follow (this may well be the longest ten minute car-ride in history). There are many small details which may seem insignificant at first but become further plot points as the story repeats itself. Each time the story repeats some action is taken differently in the hopes that it will change the outcome; often, though, making it worse. The characterizations are further developed as the story repeats. Since the story is building and fluctuating each time, it is not repetitve, and each subsequent change to the story increases the pace of the movie that much more. The directing and the story itself are well done. Where someone could have taken a story like this and let it drag by being too repetitive or lose the continuity by trying to advance the story too quickly; they came up with the right mix. 'Retroactive' is far from being shy on action; from car chases to flying lead and about everything in-between. The stand out performance in 'Retroactive' belongs to Shannon Whirry. She is incredible as the abused wife who tries to fight back. There are several in your face shots that all three play well but Shannon just seriously delivers; since this story hinges on saving her character, she gives good reason to make you want her character saved. M. Emmet Walsh is particularly nasty as Belushi's cohort in crime; and seeing Walsh's character bounced off the hood and over the roof of a speeding station wagon gives great satisfaction. Kylie Travis in her tight black pantsuit, white shirt and push-up bra is particularly captivating and exciting everytime she beats up Jim Belushi. 'Retroactice' is an exciting (at times loud), well paced, well scripted action movie with a great sci-fi premise. Ultimately this movie is not so much about time travel as it is about regrets about decisions we have made or not made and the blame we place on ourselves. If given the opportunity to change things we may find that we can actually make it worse and are not to blame for the natural course that events will take with or without us.-Bob

A word of warning before the review: I highly recommend Retroactive and suggest you go out of your way to see it in widescreen because the numerous action scenes and breathtaking desert cinematography are cramped and a pain to watch in pan-and-scan.

Relegated to a straight-to-video release, Retroactive is a smart and entertaining thriller that deserves a wider audience. The film features a relatively simple but clever premise: Superhottie Kylie Travis stars as Karen Warren, a police negotiator who's on vacation in Texas. She gets into a car accident and has to hitchhike with a somewhat odd, but seemingly friendly couple, Frank and Rayanne (James Belushi and Shannon Whirry).

But everything goes horribly wrong when Frank discovers Rayanne has been cheating on him and he murders her right in front of Karen's eyes, who proceeds to run to the nearest building, a government-owned complex run by a single occupant, a scientist named Brian (Frank Whaley). There, he accidentally activates the time travel device he was working on, sending Karen back twenty minutes, just as she's been picked up by Frank. She then becomes determined to stop the horrible crime for occurring, but unfortunately, the body count grows even larger and she must go back again to prevent an even larger massacre.

Retroactive's appeal holds mainly to sci-fi action fans. The plot has a lot of twists and turns, which keeps the film unpredictable and suspenseful. But the real treat is for action fans, who should strap in for an adrenaline-pumping thrill ride. From the moment Travis is sent back in time, the film deliver non-stop excitement. There are tense shootouts and fast-paced car chases, the latter of which boasts some of the most exhilarating stunts since The Road Warrior. From a visceral point-of-view, Retroactive surpasses most of Hollywood's recent summer blockbusters.

The film still has its flaws, none of them surprisingly having to do with a sense of repetition, considering each action setpiece has the same basic setting and situation (car chase on a lonely desert highway, shootout at a gas station). Credit director Louis Morneau for keeping each sequence fresh and taut with suspense. The set-up may be the same, but the results and resolutions considerably differ. Rather, what I do have a problem with is some technical error during the shootouts. Belushi is shown firing a six-bullet revolver at one point, but clearly fires more than ten rounds. Another similar blatant miscalculation occurs again near the end. Plot holes and leaps of logic are expected in this kind of film, but the number of shots fired from a gun shouldn't be that hard to keep track of.

As the film's tough heroine, the absolutely gorgeous Kylie Travis is refreshingly intelligent and strong-willed. She occasionally has trouble holding back that British accent of hers, but still comes across quite well (looks great in that black tank-top, too). The only thing really holding her back is the fact that she's so gorgeous, it's a little tough to believe someone with her looks works as a cop (but I see her looks more as a plus, given what eye candy she is). James Belushi is a lot of fun as the psychotic villain, clearly relishing the over-the-top role, even though his character does lose menace through some ridiculous one-liners. Frank Whaley is quite good as the young scientist, hampered only by a single scene that requires him to forget the logic of his own device which Travis corrects him on.

With blistering, fast-paced action and a fun story, Retroactive proves to be a highly enjoyable way to spend ninety minutes. Most of the running time features a tight tank-top and pants wearing Kylie Travis kicking ass, so that alone is enough to recomend the film.
*** 1/2 out of *****

The movie centers on three main characters, and four support characters. We start with a government project, ran by Frank Whirry, for time travel. One they really didn't expect to work. In fact they are closing it down Monday. Add a small time criminal, played by James Belushi, trying to sell microchips on the black market and a negotiator cop, played by Kylie Travis, that just came from a negotiation that ended up in trajedy. The roles for the wife, her lover, police officer, and gas station owner are key support characters and they all do a fine job as well as the main characters.

When our negotiator's car breaks down in the desert, up pulls our criminal with cheating wife in tow to help her out. She catches a ride with them until things turn ugly when Belushi is shown photos of the details of his wifes extra-marital activities. Travis bolts while Belushi is killing anyone in his path. She stumbles into Whirry's experiament, and "voila" she's in a time loop from hell because it gets worse every time she tries to make things right. Interesting movie. Certainly worth a rental, and for less than ten dollars, not a bad one to own. The DVD is good quality but does not include extras.

I'll be honest. I didn't watch "Retroactive" for James Belushi or Kylie Travis (the Australian actress in Aaron Spelling's "Models Inc." TV series). In fact, I did a search for Shannon Whirry and stumbled on this one. Turned out I really enjoyed it -- although Shannon was 100% different from her roles in "Private Obsession" or "Mirror Images". Apart from being surprised by a fully dressed Shannon Whirry who gave a pretty cool performance, I found this movie amazingly good for a sci-fi that didn't have to rely on computerized visual effects. (By the way, now that a remake of "The Time Machine" just came out, the "old" version with Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux still remains one of my favorites in the genre).... Well, "Retroactive" also got part of its plot based on the "time travel" concept, and some twists and turns probably borrowed from "Back To The Future". But let's not overlook this film's own charm: the Texas "heat" that could be felt throughout its 90 minutes (and got Kylie Travis to sweat quite a lot). That atmosphere alone would deserve another star.

Retroactive stars the unbelievably hot Kylie Travis as a cop who keeps going back in time to relive a disastrous situation with a psychopath (James Belushi) on a lonely desert road. Plot-wise, I won't say anymore, but there are lots of nice twists and turns, and best of all, some of the most wildly exciting action sequences I've seen all year. The car chases are fast and thrilling, the shootouts are intense, and the unpredictability of it all keeps you on the edge of your seat. The cast is excellent, with top-notch performances from Travis, Belushi, and Frank Whaley as the scientist who built the time travel device. Retroactive, despite a not so promising title, is definitely a must see thriller.

Belushi sort of soups up this very interesting flick about temporary time travel. As with any time travel movie, it leaves you guessing as to the consequences and basic physics of supposed time travel,....but it also contains a sort of theme. The main character is on the road when she hooks up with Belushi,...they then go crazy and without ruining the plot of a movie you should definatel see alot of action and time travellig occur in a desperate attempt to make right what went wrong. Definately rewatchable.

Great movie, but I'm very disapointed with the DVD image quality. It just simply sucks! Acceptable definition of contours in close plans, but very pixelated in the large/wide plans, to the point that loses detail completely and the image is almost - and just visual noise!!

EXCELLENT..SURPISED MULTIPLE TIMES....SO LIKE LIFE: WHENEVER YOU THINK YOU CAN MAKE IT BETTER WITH A SECOND CHANCE, THE OUTCOME MAY NOT (RATHER WILL NOT!) BE WHAT YOU HAD HOPE...Be careful all you "do gooders"!