Time Runner (1993)

Really Surprised!

Don't Believe the Hype

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Mark Hamill -- a pretty good actor who appeared in a lot of really bad movies and never was able to escape the typecasting of "Luke Skywalker" until he got into voice work. Quite a few of his movies I skipped back in the day, and I don't mind picking one of them up like this one just in hopes that it might end up being fun. This one was a bit better than I might have expected it to be, but nothing too remarkable.Hamill plays a guy from the future, sent back in time through a wormhole in the midst of an alien invasion to try to stop the invasion from happening. He meets up with scientist Rae Dawn Chong, who turns out to be one of the aliens herself but helps him anyway because apparently the aliens who are actually planning to invade Earth are some kind of renegades of her planet. One of them is the guy who will be the future President of the World. These are really only minor spoilers actually because the movie is so completely predictable. Brion James and Mark Baur hold down the villain roles, with James in particular being very underwhelming with his one note performance. Gordon Tipple plays the strange character Arnie, who's airplane is hijacked by Hamill and Chong but who ends up joining them for the whole rest of the adventure apparently out of sheer boredom with his regular life.Everything in this movie we've seen before. Who out there is going to be surprised when the villains decide to kill Hamill's character's mother to avoid him being born? Obviously the whole thing is a rip on "Terminator", except that in this case the aliens don't have to travel back in time to hunt Hamill, they're already in 1992 when he gets there. The name of the film and the presence of James in the cast might remind one of "Blade Runner", which would be an extremely unfortunate comparison to make. All of this being said, I didn't find the movie excruciatingly boring. Mark Hamill is a good actor and I think he did good work in the movie, as did Chong, despite the limitations of the script. The effects are surprisingly well done, although nothing really spectacular happens. And it has a nice sort of downbeat ending, plus it avoid the romantic distractions of "Terminator" -- not that they didn't make "Terminator" a better film, but it's just that almost every other imitation I've seen has imitated the romance to much lesser effect so I was glad they didn't attempt that here with Chong and Hamill.Basically a mediocre film, but it won't be a waste of time for sci-fi fans.

Let's be honest, just by looking at the cast, you can tell that this is another cheesy science fiction B-movie. The special effects won't exactly knock your socks off, but they are not detrimental to the movie, an enjoyable one for a straight to video title.The storyline is a just a new spin on the often used time travel story. Mark Hamill plays a soldier (Raynor) from the future. He is involved in a rebellion against aliens who have taken over earth. Of course, they look just like us, but don't feel pain, and are harder to kill. Just as his future earth is about to be doomed, Raynor travels back 30 years to prevent the aliens from ever coming to power. One major complication is the fact that he is to be born in just a few days, which leads to two problems. 1) If the aliens find out about him, the baby Raynor/his mother could easily be killed, hence, causing the 30 yr. old Raynor to cease to exist. 2) Only one Raynor can exist in any timeline.Perhaps a little formulaic, and not an Academy Award candidate, this movie is good for some mindless fun. It's a must-see for any Mark Hamill fan, as Mr. Hamill played a character more than 10 years his junior admirably.

Mark Hamill tried hard to prove himself as a rising actor afterRETURN OF THE JEDI back in '83, but alas, the poor dope couldn't find anything that would bring him back to the same superstardom hereceived as Luke Skywalker. With the exception of his truly excellent voice-over talent as the Joker in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, Hamill had to work in low-budget flix, like TIME RUNNER. In what looks like another TERMINATOR-style sci-fi flick, Hamill plays a soldier from (where else?) the future, who was sent back in time to the early90's in order to prevent a disaster from skewering the timeline. As tired as the storyline sounds, TIME RUNNER is actually an enjoyablepiece of work. Hamill plays a less-restrained performance, going gonzo on the baddies with guns instead of using the Force or light sabers. The late, great Brion James also shines, as the head honcho of the villains that Hamill's character so truly desired to eliminate.

Well, it was filmed in Kelowna, BC. As a result, it deserves at least 5/10, because it shows the beauty of the Okanagan Valley. Apart from that though...