Retroactive - Fun little B-movie

‘Retroactive.’ What’s it all about?  Who’s it aimed at?  Um, hard to say really.  At a push I’d have to guess ‘men.’ And probably men who don’t mind daft, vaguely sci-fi B-movies.  Any film that includes a situation where a day/event repeats itself over and over again will always be likened to ‘Groundhog Day.’ Retroactive isn’t really like that at all, but it does borrow the idea of an event happening again and again.

A woman, on her way through the deserts of Texas, breaks down.  And, if that isn’t bad enough, the only person willing to pick her up is James Belushi.  And he’s a complete psychopath.  Naturally, it doesn’t take long for things to go bad and gunplay and shootouts ensue.  However, it’s not so simple as our heroine simply having to survive the chase.  She only goes and stumbles on one of those shady government labs that seem to exist in ‘film-world.’ There, she discovers that the lone scientist (don’t high level scientific experiments normally require huge teams of people to run them?  Oh well, never mind...) can transport her twenty minutes back in time.

The good news is that she’s no longer pursued by James Belushi.  The bad news – it doesn’t take long before it all starts to go wrong again.  Rinse and repeat.  So, time and time again, she has to figure out the best way to stop his violent rampage while getting as few people shot by him as possible.

Kylie Travis plays our heroine.  And she does it competently enough.  She’s feisty and does the job.  You’ll certainly root for her throughout what she has to go through.  However, it’s James Belushi who stands out.  He’s larger than life in the most bonkers way possible.  He’s clearly loving being completely off his head and delights in playing the nut-job – he does tend to steal most scenes, but, ultimately, it’s Kylie we’ll care about when all’s said and done.

Basically, it’s a ‘one on one’ chase sort of film.  And, like with many similar films, it can be a little bit hard to maintain the premise.  The shift of power continually shifts between ‘hunter’ and ‘prey’ and there are more than a few times where one could blatantly execute the other there and then.  Naturally, they don’t.  If they did, the film would only be about twenty-five minutes long. 

So, if you can suspend your disbelief long enough to get over than minor gripe, you’ll actually find a solid enough little action movie.  It’s nothing new and it would probably never make your top ten films of all time, but it’ll certainly fill just under an hour and a half of your time if you’re looking for some sci-fi action fun in the desert.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one