Did someone forget to pay the editing bill? I wonder what kind of stuff they're teaching in the schools now, because you used to have to know two to four Romance languages just to get in grad school, let alone do any postdoctoral work. But it's France, so, O.K. "Timeline" gives a historical basis for disagreement in Franco-American relations by sending an American back in time to cause the problems.
These unbiased and logical minds spend less than ten minutes between discovering the time machine and getting into it. Only one of them doesn't go, I guess he's the "control". The compelling argument the cruel "suit" uses to get them to go is their comparative superiority to navigate the time due to their knowledge. A dark secret lurks
.But their vanity shields them from questioning what went wrong. The beginning scenes in the Dark Ages are horrible. Someone saved a few cents on the special effects budget, it's just a bunch of theatrics then a cut to the river they supposedly appeared in. Then they walk through a forest that looks suspiciously like the Hollywood Hills. The "manor" they've been studying looks like a paper maché shack thrown up on hockey sticks.
None of these modern day scientists know Karate or Tae-Bo, have any money/valuables or relations back then, but show up in a group anonymously in the Dark Ages and expect to go about their business unnoticed. Because they've studied the Dark Ages and people did that all the time. None of them can defend themselves worth a damn. Nobody brings a Red Cross pocketknife. They shift from egging each other on like rednecks on "The Family Feud" to panicked hysteria and physical attacks regardless of nearby threats. In one scene the professor's son leaps at their guide, although the English soldiers searching for them are directly less than fifty feet away. The script gets so bad though you can't blame them for forgetting. When the group yammer at the corporate Satan for sending the Professor back to the dangerous Dark Ages, a few lines later one of them demands to know why two marines are coming along.
The marines don't do too well, they get offed seconds into the trip. Obviously Dark Ages behavior wasn't in his Seals Training module. One of them scurries like a churl wide-eyed before oncoming horses and gawps at his pursuer until he bites it. The other takes a few arrows before ripping the stop off a grenade. Evidently he could pocket a grenade but an arrow-proof vest wasn't a good idea. Transiting through the portal (all done with smoke and mirrors, check) the entire lab is exploded. The CEO is shocked, shocked, that even while he'll evade every law and invent new ones to avoid, his time travellers have tried some portable life insurance. What the evil greedy czar of business doesn't tell them is that the DNA reconstruction process has a few bugs in it
Supposedly several of our crew should be giants, much larger than the average men of that era, but even the "warriors" look like some guys plucked off the lot coffeehouse. Lord Oliver's lady isn't even accorded one shot, just shuffled aside off screen. The Manor parlor looks darker than a stable. The point of view is hard to follow, it strays from broadly scenic to capture the vast panorama
to broadly scenic to capture the vast two-shot and the actors leaving frame awkwardly.
Ah, the accents. Marton Csokas (XXX, The Fellowship of the Rings) is half Czech, half Australian, and does a two-faced combo English drawl/American whine. Gerard Butler, (Reign of Fire/Phantom of the Opera) who I thought was Irish, pretends to be Scottish. Anna Friel, an English actress, plays a Frenchwoman. How she understands Butler I have no idea. Frances O'Connor, the wonder of "Mansfield Park", plays a shallow and not-too-bright archaeologist who is "obsessed" with her work. Connolly's Irish accent is never explained. David Thewlis, (English) plays the corrupt American twerp. Lord Oliver, the English chief pillager, sounds authentically English by way of the Tottenham Court Road. The French Lord, Arnault, is played by legitimately French(and half Irish) Lambert Wilson, (the Matrix III, Sahara) who outclasses them all
You may remember him from some Calvin Klein ads he did whispering about "Obsession". You'll know the better actors in this movie by the amount of hoods, helmeting, and hair they have dragged across their face. You can't blame them for hiding
..
This movie seemed to be a first class assembly and it was as if the main actor, possibly Sean Connery or Harrison Ford, had dropped out from playing the Professor, Lord Oliver, or the CEO, and they made the movie anyway. Certainly the script couldn't have been an incentive. Michael Crichton must have bawled all night after seeing this. I read the book and it's as if they warped parts of it on an acid trip and other parts at 16 rpm. What other reason can there be? What, Michael Caine got choosy suddenly after 40 years? You know you're in trouble when an actioner with this much talent comes out and the over-the-line name in the trailer is
.Paul Walker. That's right, white-bread, empty-eyed, one dimensional Paul Walker. He dresses Mervyn's. He looks 12.
You usually tune into a movie like "Timeline" to see the villain get his comeuppance. I kept browsing the credits curiously to see who was to blame
and then it appeared
a name from the Dark Ages like a flaming firebrand of fear, hysteria, and damage
Michael Ovitz.
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