Running Against Time (1990) (TV)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Bruce Seth Green

Writers (WGA):

Stanley Shapiro (book)
Stanley Shapiro (teleplay) ...

Release Date:

21 November 1990 (USA)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Plot:

History professor David Rhodes never has got over the death of his older brother, 1966 in Vietnam. When...

Plot Keywords:

Vietnam | Older Brother | President | Kennedy | Einstein

Cast

Robert Hays	...	David Rhodes
Catherine Hicks	...	Laura Whittaker
Sam Wanamaker	...	Hendryk Koopman, Ph.D.
Wayne Tippit	...	FBI Agent Landry
James DiStefano	...	Lee Harvey Oswald
Tracy Fraim
Juanita Jennings
Mark Phelan
Paul Scherrer	...	Chris Rhodes
Brian Smiar	...	President Lyndon B. Johnson
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Julie Ariola	...	Mrs. Rhodes
Gerald Berns	...	Old Christopher
Thomas Robert Burke	...	Cop #2
Tim De Zarn	...	Aide (as Tim de Zarn)
Nike Doukas	...	Student #2
Duncan Gamble	...	Mr. Rhodes
Richard Gilbert-Hill	...	Police Spokesperson
Dean Hill	...	Captain Will Fritz
Darlene Kardon	...	Head Nurse
Albert Manquero	...	Young Husband
Russ Marin	...	Doctor w / Chris
J. Lamont Pope	...	Student #1
Rusty Schwimmer	...	Sales Rep
Damion Stevens	...	Young David
Pepper Sweeney	...	Student #3
Warren Sweeney	...	Dr. Wilkins
Milt Tarver	...	FBI Agent Clemens
Ron Troncatty	...	Depository Employee
Andrew Walker	...	Cop #1
Michael Whaley	...	Security Guard

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:L | Finland:K-8 | Germany:12 | USA:PG | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Coastline Partners

Trivia:

Catherine Hicks also traveled in time in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

Uber-confusing Time-Travel movie, complete with Time-Paradoxes.

Time travel. Man's greatest wish seems to be to go back and change the past.

Is time a straight-line, or a circle? Is it relative? Does changing the past create different, parallel universes?

For this TV movie, I took the view that most movies gave which is to assume time is a straight line. Unfortuently it makes the movie a lot more confusing and hard to follow.

This TV movie is much like the 'The Butterfly Effect'. Our hero wants to go back into time and stop the war in vietnam so that his brother can live. To this end, he believes stopping the JFK assassination will stop the vietnam war ever being conducted (as well as concluding the cold war 30 years early!).

But as ever, if you change the past something will happen to make things worse for the future. For some reason, Lyndon Johnson decides to nuke Vietnam as well as send in more troops. Heck, why don't you just use the fabled 'neutron bomb' whilst your at it.

Anyhow, everything cocks up and the time-travellers are left wondering if they can ever change the past. Our hero goes to a local hospital where he finds his younger brother and tells him to stay out of Vietnam.

But if he went in the past to prevent his brother going to vietnam, this means the hero would have no recollection of his brother ever going and dying in vietnam - thus he would have no reason to go back in time.

This is one of many time-paraodoxes that can hurt your head if you try to think about it.

What happens at the end? Well, lets just say time, it appears, has a concious.

Overall: 5/10.