This
film is a Chinese movie studio’s dream come true, because it has multiple Yang Mis,
the glamorous star of the smash-hit Tiny
Times franchise. However, instead of an editorial assistant at a fashion
magazine, she plays Xia Tian, a dedicated theoretical physicist and
single-mother. That is true of all the Xia Tians. To save her son, the research
scientist will jump back in time more than once in Chang (a.k.a. Yoon
Hong-seung)’s Reset (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
There
are two labs competing to develop alternate dimension wormholes as a means of
time-travel. The one in America recklessly cut corners, resulting in
wide-spread psychosis in its test subjects, who basically burned the joint to
the ground. By the way, did we mention Reset
was produced by Jackie Chan? It isn’t hard to see his influence, is it?
Of
course, the Chinese lab is proceeding in a Steady-Eddie fashion, so the Western
consortium hires Tsui Hu, a former guinea pig, to steal the NeXus group’s data
and bomb their Metropolis-esque facilities
back to the stone age. To circumvent security, Tsui Hu kidnaps Xia Tian’s son
Doudou to force her to be the inside person. Being a real piece of human
sludge, Tsui Hu kills Doudou as motivation for Xia Tian to complete the time
travel experiment. That turns out to be a little too motivating. Escaping from
Tsui Hu’s crew, Xia Tian comes back in time on her own, becoming a
migraine-inducing loose cannon. Yes, this process will repeat again.
When
it comes to logic, Reset simply
couldn’t be bothered. Frankly, they never attempt to explain how Evil Corp
hopes to make money off time travel. Seriously, are they spending all this time
and effort to game the stock market or to pick every day’s trifecta at Aqueduct?
It doesn’t really matter though, because Chang just carries us along with his
lunacy. Yang has first class action chops (check her out in Wu Dang if you doubt it), which she gets
to start exercising when the third Xia Tian comes along. We’ll admit it,
watching bunch of Yang Mis running, jumping, and fighting bad guys is pretty
much our idea of a good time.
To
his credit, Wallace Huo also makes a surprisingly sinister villain. Honestly,
you can practically see the black smoke coming out of Tsui Hu’s ears. Plus,
Chin Shih-chieh is terrific in scenes that would be spoilery to explain.
Korean
filmmaker Chang has an affinity for action (catch up with The Target for an armchair roller coaster ride) that never fails
him in Reset. Granted, there is a lot
of fudging and hocus-pocus in Cha Muchun’s screenplay, but it still presents a
relatively fresh take on time travel that it then takes delight in complicating
to high heaven. It’s a ton of unruly fun, but Yang still does some credible
thesping as the distraught and driven parent. Highly recommended for fans of
action and time travel movies, Reset opens
this Friday (6/30) in New York, at the AMC Empire.
