41

A time travel tale is a good start for any young director. The story was interesting and low on predictability.

The main character looked a little vacant at times, considering he found himself in varying degrees of stressful situations. But in the main, he was engaging.

Some of the dialogue was a little ropey and a few scenes had an air of awkwardness about them. I put this down to some below par screen writing and the odd inexperienced actor. The police scenes looked at times, like they belonged in a different movie. Far too hammy, and unnecessarily comedic.

The score was great and the movie does leave you thinking about the many possible paradoxes that the main character's actions inspire.

But as with most time-travel movies, don't think too hard about it, just focus on the bigger message. Which, at least is something that you are left with come the end.

Delving into this area of extremely low budget time travel sci-fi gets with it the inevitable comparison to 2004 film "Primer" which was a masterwork of excruciatingly hard sci-fi.

Here, the mechanisms are largely unimportant, even though there is an entire scene devoted to basically expo-dumping how it works in the form of hypotheticals and quizzing of a small group of four philosophers and scientists.

Some guy named Aidan is driving in his car with his ex-girlfriend when suddenly someone jumps in front of the car while he's driving at night and it crashes, killing her and hospitalizing him. He meets a seemingly loony old man in the hospital who tells him to go to a motel and go to room 41 and crawl in a hole in the bathroom floor. Earlier in the film, someone who looked exactly like him told him not to go to that motel. So naturally he goes in.

From there he learns that going through the hole and emerging brings him about 12 hours into the past. From there, he tries to change what happened with his ex-girlfriend and the like.

Where the film falters, for me at least, is that it seems to not be able to decide upon what type of "time travel paradox" to go with. The presence of himself earlier in the film and the revelation about the cause of the crash would seem to imply a predestination paradox where he is in a situation where time is fixed, and any attempt he makes to change the past has already been done.

But then at the same time, other mutually incompatible paradoxes are toyed with as well, including a "multiple universes branching off" and some others. Toying with many different ideas for time travel would be something interesting to see if done well; the problem is it is not done well here. In some cases we don't even know what is happening and the determining factor as to whether Aidan is able to change something in the past amounts to "Whatever the script feels like".

As well, it drags in several places, and takes an awful long time to get to a really intriguing "Wow" moment, by which time the film was essentially over with barely 10 minutes left. Whether or not the extra focus or attention to detail would've helped or hindered the film I probably wouldn't be able to say, but for what it is, it was a neat enough film.

Full review on my blog max4movies: 41 is an independent science fiction movie about a student of philosophy, who discovers a trap door in a motel room that leads to the past. The premise is basic but interesting, and the movie is mostly well executed, with great cinematography and an atmospheric score. The performances are somewhat middling, but the main actor mostly does a decent job. The plot is overall thrilling and clever, however, the ending will throw some viewers off, due to a central plot hole. Still, the movie is efficiently made and demonstrates that science fiction can also deal with very down-to-earth issues.

A wonderful simple (low budget) time travel story. It kept me entranced the whole way. A young man meets himself and the loop begins. I'm not giving anything away. The gist is the time travel is one way and to solve his dilemma how to use his "trip". The acting and characters drew me in. Besides the main character there are a lot of quirky characters populating the journey. Even a couple of "mean" authority figures that make the hero try even harder - just enough fear and danger to make you cheer on our hero. The cinematography and editing made the story take on a fairy-tale quality that suited this simple tale. The subtext is of compassion and how far will you go to mend a heart and do no harm. Its a life's lesson suited for this tale.

A most excellent and entertaining film, well written and scored. The dialogue was at times thought provoking and, to be honest, was more or less in line with my thoughts on time travel which is as good a reason as any to like it! Perhaps a better script might have ruined it, and special effects would not have suited the films nuances and quirks. I have never come across a bad Australian film and this, being no exception, is a better one than some other highly glossy and commercial ones. In many ways this reminds me of a typical British film shot with lots of love on a low budget - earthy and local, with no pretensions. Plot holes were easy to forgive given that there were few for the given budget, and that, apart from the police scenes, the acting was of a quality any director would be pleased with. I enjoyed it. I would have bought this!