In
the TV show 7 Days, that was the
limit to how far they could travel back in time. Sam Beckett was limited to the
span of his own lifetime in Quantum Leap.
However, the time travel system developed by Helen Phillips’ fellow scientist
husband only goes back 36 hours. That means she cannot go back and prevent his
murder, but maybe she can stop herself from becoming a murderer herself in
Diego Hallivis’s Curvature (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.
Phillips
has been a basket case since the suicide of her husband Wells, but she suddenly
snaps out of her funk when she gets a mystery call warning her to get out of
the house. It is sort of like the opening scene to The Matrix, but the voice sounds weirdly like her rather than Laurence
Fishburne.
When
she connects with her platonic work pal, Alex, Phillips learns she has lost a
week of time. Soon thereafter, she comes to suspect the time machine Wells
developed with his partner at Curvature Corp. really works—and the mysterious
blue hoodie woman is actually herself, gone back thirty-six hours. When she
discovers the truth about Wells’ murder, which we can guess the second our
prime suspect enters the frame, she realizes why she went back. Can she stop
herself from going to a very dark place, when she happens to be herself?
Curvature is an okay time
travel film, but it is way too predictable. Honestly, one of the innumerable
drawbacks to filmmakers’ biases against businessmen and venture capitalists is
that it makes it stupidly simple to deduce the real villain’s identity. Curvature is a clear-cut example of that
phenomenon.
On
the plus, side the time travel stuff is pretty decent. Wisely, Hallivis does
not try to do too much with respect to near-misses and crossed paths for
Phillips and Phillips-prime. Instead, he focuses on Phillips’ intellectual and
emotional challenges. A bit where she and good old Alex use their shared
history to figure out a password is especially well-written, by Brian DeLeeuw.
Lyndsy Fonseca and Zach Avery also turn it quite nicely, even they are often a
bit stiff together. Sadly, the great Linda Hamilton had to be released early,
so we only get a few tantalizing scenes of her playing Phillips’ mentor.
However, it is fun to see been-in-everything character actor Glenn Moorshower
turn up again as Wells’ partner, Tomas.
