A Sound of Thunder

I have been a fan of the Science Fiction genre for a long, long time. My favorite theme has always been Time Travel. I enjoy history and the thoughts of being an eyewitness to an event in the past. I’ve been working on my own Time Travel novel.

Most Sci-Fi fans know that the first rule of Time Travel is don’t mess with the past. You never know what might be the future ramifications. That is the premise for this old fashioned Saturday matinee-style drama. It is definitely an adventure for this Jurassic starved generation. You know, let’s go back in time and hunt some dinosaurs!

Director Peter Hyams, who has a past with futurist dramas (“Timecop”, “Capricorn One”, “Outland”) doesn’t just pull a plot out of thin air. “A Sound of Thunder” is based on a Ray Bradury short story. I found the story both intelligent and intriguing. There is plenty of action and special effects to help you find the bottom of that large bag of popcorn. Most of the CGI was outstanding. There were some forgivable scenes where the dinos have a shiny coat and the Chicago of the future looks like blown-up models.

The main story is about wealthy adventurers who aunty up the jack to go back and hunt those large toothy dinosaurs. They must not stray off the pathway. They are not to take anything with them or leave anything behind. Our adventure into the Cretaceous period includes killing only animals that are about to die. You know, let’s go check out the local tar pit or lava flow patterns from area volcanoes. Remember, these 21st Century visitors are not to disturb anything.

But something, of course, goes awry, and 65 million years later the Earth begins to pay the price. Time waves begin to sweep over Chicago. Each wave begins to advance the evolutionary scale. The climate turns very hot and humid. Enormous trees begin to spring up overnight. Thick vines begin to swallow up skyscrapers. Giant spiders appear, and the animals in the zoo morph into extremely large creatures. It is an amazing doomsday transformation.

Our scientist hero, every SciFi nature run-a-muk flic has to have one, is Travis Ryer (Edward Burns). His mission, whether he decides to accept it or not, is to go back in time again and see where this safari went awry. His assignment should be simple enough: See what happened and correct the mistake. Unfortunately, the time wave vines have wrecked the laboratory for the Time Safari. Not even our cool, bottom-line businessman (Ben Kingsley) can solve this one.

No problem, enter the inventor of the time machine, Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack). She plays the role of “see I told you so” strict adherent to all the rules. Sonia must now build a new machine, just like that, and save the world. Before they can go back, our A-team must scour Chicago for clues to the current havoc. Well, no one ever said it was going to be easy. Yes, lucky breaks and predictable coincidences help to move and push all the right buttons.

This film is not without some negative content. The sexual content is fairly mild. You know, your obligatory women in revealing clothing and some sexual dialogue. Most of the profanity is covered over by the extremely loud sound track, but there are lots of obscenities and religious exclamations. I was offended by an abundance of sexual slang. This isn’t your typical PG-13 movie with lots of bloodless violence. There is plenty of carnage for the new X-Box mind-dulled generation. I also do not agree with many of the evolutionary overtones in the story line.

My recommendation is somewhat mixed. This is a decent SciFi film with all the typical flaws. The PG-13 rating should be strictly observed. Parents may want to wait and watch a filtered version with ClearPlay technology. I know that I love my ClearPlay DVD player. It cuts out the language and skips over the offensive content.