Klaus
Meisner has an unusual business plan. His company supplies delicate designer
flowers, the rare radioactive energy source MRD, and possibly time travel.
Presumably, the mark-up on the first two is extremely profitable. The latter is
under-development. Unfortunately, the socially awkward scientist who devised
the wormhole opening technology is getting a little erratic. That sort of
happens when your future self comes back in time. Complications arise in Jacob
Gentry’s Synchronicity (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in Los Angeles.
Meisner
has a stranglehold on the world’s MRD supply, but it is the only thing powerful
enough to drive Jim Beale’s Frankenstein-looking
apparatus—thus, his overtures to the stone cold venture capitalist. Initially,
his command test drive looks like a disaster, but when the smoke clears, Beale
discovers the duly transmitted sample dahlia—or something. Don’t get hung up on
any technical details. Gentry knows they make no sense so he blasts them by the
audience at warp speed. Just accept some serious time traveling is about to
happen—unless its actually a wormhole to a parallel dimension.
Just
don’t get hung up period. The important thing is Beale figures out Meisner and
his femme fatale kept woman Abby have been playing him—unless Meisner has been
playing them both. Maybe she seduced him or maybe they just fell for each
other. Beale will try to determine which is true and also save his breakthrough
technology from Meisner’s grubby clutches by jumping through the wormhole. Of
course, he can’t meet himself in the same time period, so his Mutt & Jeff
assistants, Chuck and Matt, will contrive ways to keep them apart. That will
get increasingly difficult.
The
world of Synchronicity is rather
pleasantly neo-retro-futuristic, looking like half Bladerunner and half New York Marriott Marquis, which is pretty
cool. There are a lot of concrete stairs for Beale and Beale Prime to scamper
up and down. This is a wonderfully choreographed time travel film, much like Timecrimes and The Infinite Man, but it lacks a similarly airtight internal system
of logic. Rational causality goes out the window pretty early, but Gentry
replaces that pedantic hobgoblin with a healthy dose of hardboiled noir. He
even throw in a dash of the unreliable narrator down the stretch.
Chad
McKnight is solid enough as the theory-smart, life-dumb Beale and Briane Davis generates
plenty of sparks as Abby. However, the real genre glee comes from Michael
Ironside doing his villainous thing as Meisner and A.J. Bowen’s Chuck, serving
as the slightly smart-alecky audience surrogate and increasingly exasperated
voice of reason. Good things happen when those two are on the screen.
