The Science fiction sub-genre of a time-loop, a repeated scenario involving time-traveling has been, ironically, around for awhile. This film isn’t so much a time loop but a Mobius strip construct. A not so linear approach to the end/beginning. That the protagonist must return to the source of when everything went wrong for the future has been done so many times that we might actually be in a time-loop ourselves. Subjected to perpetual manufacturing of this kind of storytelling. We can without doubt now call this sub-genre classic. A formula that even goes back to the fifties with a pulp book “Tomorrow Plus X” by Wilson Tucker- along with films like “Edge of Tomorrow” (based on the manga “All You Need is Kill” which we just got an animated film adaptation of last week”),  “Back to Future” “Groundhog’s Day” and of course the main source of inspiration to this film “12 Monkeys”, based on the french short film “La Jetee”. So obviously inspired by the film that Sam Rockwell’s character is a mixture of Bruce Wilis and Brad Pitt from that film. It was inspired so much by that and other films that it is a struggle to view it as an original film. The result is a mix-bag that runs out of fuel at the end.  

It has a great start and enticing, and a promising beginning of a second act, but once we deviate from the main story to investigate all the supporting characters’ back stories it doesn’t add much to the story in fact, it subtracts from its theme to make the film a lot darker than it needed to be. It would have just fine to stay on the main road of writing then to take the off-ramp to each little character. The result the film has an identity crisis of tone, and a janky mess of storytelling. 

This is definitely a vessel for Sam Rockwell to be the headline of a movie. He’s a fabulous actor and provides such rich interesting portrayals but Rockwell isn’t right to headline.  If maybe his character was a side character instead of the main then the film can be what it wants to be more of an ensemble motley cast of characters then focus on just one. But the story wants to be clever at the end and by then we just want it to end. 

The element of the film that should have been its main emphasis is that world has grown detached from reality and are consumed with social media and plugged-in to video games that the world ended and nobody noticed was already a compelling theme, but the story didn’t feel that was enough. Instead, it wanted to reset to disturbing themes of normalcy of school-shootings, the encouragement of A.I. development, and untreated mental health issues. All important topics that when peppered in don’t have the punch or sustainability that the writer wishes it would. Important themes that are treated as paper clip attached, and feel sanitized. The huge problem of the film is that it deviates from its main focus of reality deviation.  And wears it inspiration on its sleeves desperate to be recognized most then being at all original. 6/10