Retroactive in a low rent, low output version of Source Code, where the heroine repeatedly clicks the ‘reset’ button in the hope of altering a prior reality sufficiently to warrant using another save slot later. Or something… Look, Source Code is way better. Watch that instead of this.
Jim Belushi plays Frank, a loudmouth hothead redneck Elvis impersonator with a beat down wife. He picks up a female passenger named Karen, and after a short uncomfortable ride the situation denigrates to the point that bad stuff happens. Irretrievable stuff. Stuff even an ‘I’m sorry for murdering you’ and flowers can fix.
Only on this occasion the tail end of said ‘stuff’ takes place near a large underground bunker in the middle of the desert. In this cavernous facility one (!) scientist works on a contraption that he believes will allow him to alter the course of time. And it does.
So on the spur of the moment ex-cop Karen decides to be the invention’s first active guinea pig, heading back to attempt to correct the course of recent history.
Unlike Source Code which took the high road, Retroactive suffers due to the fact that Belushi’s Frank is a most obnoxious and abrasive character indeed, and that in each run through of the same scenario, the characters make choices that I’ll have you screaming “not that idiot” repeatedly. This is more alarming given that one of them actually knows how history panned out on previous occasions.
With the bad guy being unlikable in the purest form, and the good gal incapable of putting a logical full stop to proceedings, Retroactive becomes more of a chore than a low budget surprise, a B grade sci-fi shoot em up with flawed characters that does justice to neither genre.
Thankfully someone used the time machine to go back to the past and apparently erase everyone’s memory about this film. Because until I chanced upon it on the highest and dustiest shelf in the DVD shop I certainly hadn’t heard of it before today, nor will I be discussing it beyond…
And in the meantime might I suggest Source Code?
Final Rating – 6 / 10. Several versions of the same dull scenario with no entertainment value and obnoxious voices. Doesn’t that sound like a Mariah Carey album?
