Customer Reviews

Retrograde

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

So many of the 80's fashions are now coming back (to bite us...), that it got me thinking again about my high school years, including the crushes I had during those days of yore...One of the most spectacular ones was, of course, Dolphie (in his Rocky prime)...I can scarsely believe the man is still churning out action flicks! I must say the time has been kind to his body (still hot in his fifties! at least to this 38 year old...), though his acting skills have not benefited equally (or, maybe I'm wrong: his acting hasn't really deteriorated that much; but then, I doubt it could have actually been any worse...). Still, the man possesses a certain degree of charisma, which makes him very watchable...I was entertained, and think the price of the DVD (equal to the price of a movie ticket) money well spent.
Considering that Retrograde is obviously a flick made on a shoe string budget, I was pleasantly surprised by the fairly convincing cgi and sets. The story line made sense as well (for the most part), which is not something true of all Dolph movies. I was annoyed though by how often I had to engage the suspention of disbelief in order to "get on with the show". Most of it could have been avoided had only some attention to detail been employed by the makers (oh, come on!: a man cannot pass out for five hours outdoors, in the snow, in a minus forty degree temp, and then jump to his feet with nothing but a grumpy mood for a side effect!...and what's up with the unending "damsel in distress" act?!: in order to keep upright, a woman does NOT need a man's shoulder EVERY time the ship tilts to a side...otherwise, it would suggest an impaired cerebellum, and most of us are JUST FINE!!! thank you very much!).
Anyway, I was entertained, though if the original Star Wars was a "five stars", I cannot honestly give this film anything over "two stars", and it is only because this film is so much better then the usual Dolph fare...

When one watches a low budget action thriller, one must forget the need to forgo a willing suspension of belief. In RETROGRADE, this is easier said than done. I have no problem with time travel stories, as this one is, but I expect that once time travel is inserted, then I expect the writers to confront some obvious questions of paradox and altered time lines. The year is 2209, and Earth's population has been decimated by the appearance of an alien plague two centuries earlier. Billions have died and the survivors have developed a partial immunity. Their chief scientists by then have mastered time travel (although the film does not address how) and a time travel team has been assembled to return to 2009 when a meteor struck Earth bearing the plague. Dolph Lundgren is Foster, their leader. The first few minutes of the plot hold our interest, especially when we have been led to believe that an altered time line may pose its own plot complications. However, director Christopher Kulikowski introduces an entirely unbelievable subplot wherein most of Lundgren's crew decide to sabotage the mission. That to do so would hurt them in their time line is not considered. No explanation for their villainy is presented. The plot involves Lundgren trying to blow up an ice breaker stuck in Antarctica so as to destroy the virus. The bad guys wish to prevent that so as to ensure its spread. RETROGRADE is not a martial arts film, though it has a few scenes of that. Nor is it a convincing actioner. The film mostly limps from scene to scene with the mutinying crew from the future showing a clear propensity to kill even as they do not evince a reason for doing so. RETROGRADE took only nineteen days to shoot with two more for editing and the clumsy non-segues are clear proof. The final scene of Lundgren back in the future with an altered time line (SPOILER HERE) is an insult to an audience that demands to know how he could so easily reconnect to a family that by all rights should have disappeared when he changed the past. RETROGRADE is only for those die hard fans of brainless actioners that star otherwise convincing heroes like Dolph Lundgren, who by the way was paid one million dollars for his less than three weeks of work.

We have now reached the era when even a low budget sci fi flick can look pretty good. And this one does look good the cgi (computer generated effects) are more realistic than was possible a few years back at this budget level. Another good thing is that it has Dolph Lundgren, who is a very entertaining action star. And I agree that he has put out some excellent low budget action flicks over the past ten years. He has a solid presence and he can even show some emotional depth. The action is pretty good and the sets look pretty good for this budget of movie. And that's no mean feat to accomplish on a low budget. In reality this is a action and sci fi blend movie and the acting is good enough to enjoy it on that level too. And best of all the effects look decent so you can say things are improving for low budget producers using cgi effects, and that's a good thing. After all on many (1990-today) low budget sci fi flicks the cgi effects were not so great because of lack of money. The acting and stories made them fun though sometimes; and this is a good little story with a true blue hero who is clearly fighting for good and that's another reason to sit through this sci fi flick.

To those of you have been sleeping on action-god, Dolph Lundgren, I have a few words for you. WAKE UP! His movies can be very entertaining and always push the envelope. In the future, Dolph plays Captain John Foster. Foster leads a team of genetically unique men and woman on a dangerous trip back in time to rid the human race of a deadly virus. Travelling by space ship, Foster begins to discover that some of his crew-members aren't who he thought they were. Embroiled in a futuristic space-fight to save his own life, Foster must find a way to stay alive for he may just be the human's last hope.
What you really get with Retrograde is the melding of the two greatest genres known to man: Action and Sci-Fi. The flick is packed with some hard action and cool CGI. Rediscover one of the 90's top stars in one of his many fine films of recent years. Good popcorn movie to watch with your buddies, good for repeat views. Pop it in and enjoy!

Dolph Lundgren is no stranger to the sci-fi genre, but before he made "Retrograde", none of his previous excursions looked like they were fit for the SyFy channel. Comprising the very end of the mercenary stage of Lundgren's DTV career (i.e. before he began directing his own features), it's a minor low point in the Swedish Superman's filmography, slightly assuaged by the fact that most folks have never heard of it. I'm not sure if it ever had a shot at being really good, but you'd think that it could've certainly been better than *this.*

The story: a team of time-travelers from a plague-ravaged future, led by Captain John Foster (Lundgren), ventures to present-day Antarctica to stop the spread of an otherworldly sickness. When his greedy rival (Joe Montana, Helen of Troy) leads a mutiny against him, Foster must stop the crew of a research vessel from spreading the contagion to the populated world while preserving his own life from his newfound enemy.

This movie could definitely have been written a bit better. It's never made clear how Joe Montana's character plans to profit from the mutiny, the tacked-on ending is really kind of a "WTF" ordeal, the nature of the deadly infection is kind of sprung on you (28 Days Later, anybody?), and the jerkish financier of the research mission (Joey Sagal, The Return of Swamp Thing) is teased throughout the movie to be a villain but absolutely nothing comes of it. More broadly, the film seems sort of split between two storylines: the ordeal faced by Dolph's character and simultaneous events encountered by crewmembers of the ship, most of who hardly interact with Dolph, like Gary Daniels. Oh yeah, Gary Daniels is in this movie too, and man o man do I want to get my hands on the knucklehead responsible for not having him and Dolph fight eachother (The Expendables later made their non-fight encounters two for two). Then again, even if they had traded kicks, there's no reason to think that it would've been any good, since none of the action - including four minor hand-to-hand brawls and two shootouts - is very good at all.

From a technical standpoint, the movie isn't a total disaster, though you can definitely tell at times that it was completed at a very rushed pace (supposedly, combined production and post-production took barely over a month). The CGI isn't awful but I've seen better, even on a low budget, and the occasional traditional special effect (e.g. villains getting sucked into space) isn't very convincing either. On the other hand, there's occasionally a lack of any special effects, like when the filmmakers totally fudged the plague-carrying meteorite crashing into the earth. In at least one scene, the editor clearly forgot to remove the sound made by Lundgren's all-leather costume as he moved around in it. And on the matter of costumes, I resent the fact that Lundgren and his crew were shoehorned into campy-looking motorcycle gear when Dolph was rocking a nifty trench coat early on in the movie.

The film moves at a good enough pace and a couple of the character interactions are silly enough to be amusing, but it's not enough to save the picture. On a slow night, "Retrograde" will make acceptable TV viewing but nobody ought to pay to see this. If you're looking for quality, Dolph's made much better movies, and even if you're looking for camp, Dolph's made movies that are bad for more notable and entertaining reasons. Save your dough, folks.

retrograde, it;s a great movie, theres not one dull moment in any of the sences,I,ve always been a Dolph Lungren fan,When I buy a movie, I look the story line,what is this all about, after checking out the story in detail thats when i buy the dvd.I would recommend this movie to all the fans who like the action.

Bad effects, predictable in every way, they should have paid me to watch it.

Sorry Dolph, you can do better