Slipstream

Slipstream obviously is a bad movie. Now there are two types of bad movies. The first is of the Steven Seagal-category: meant to be cheap fun, and that's what it is. Poor film-making, but somehow fun to watch. The second category is where Slipstream fits into: meant to be original, innovative and artful yet all you get is mere pretentious junk. A Steven Seagal-picture knows it's terrible but doesn't want to be any more than terrible. Slipstream tries to be terrific but is actually the opposite, so in the end it's annoying as hell. The whole movie you're thinking: whoever made this should be sent to prison for insulting the intelligence of man. To sum up some of the things that went wrong with this flick: 1) the director uses all kinds of advanced techniques, mostly derived from The Matrix, for no purpose at all (a little like Swordfish but a thousand times worse), 2) the acting is totally unconvincing, people dying everywhere and the protagonists behaving like nothing is the matter, 3) huge plot holes everywhere, 4) an incredible load of editing errors, 5) everything is ripped from other movies, 6) this is the worst thing I've ever seen, 7) you shouldn't watch it, 8) forget all the positive comments around here. Thank you.

A world away from the 1989 sci-fi faux pas starring Mark Hamill and Bill Paxton that carried this movie title, this a low-budget film with an interesting cast. Most notably last seen in The Lord of the Rings, Sean Astin, Bosnian beauty Ivana Milicevic and Hertfordshire hardman Vinnie Jones.

However, despite being produced on a very limited budget, and in a remarkably short period of time (27 days according to van Eyssen), this film still remains watchable.

The script is good and delivery from Astin is excellent. Vinnie Jones plays…well, Vinnie Jones and Milicevic has her moments; only plot holes in the screenplay itself, written by Louis Morneau and Phillip Badger, let the actors down in important scenes of interaction.

This film doesn't have the same seamless flow that other time-playback movies like the fantastic Run Lola Run or even Groundhog Day or Sliding Doors has. Consequently you're never quite sure whether you actually give a damn about the characters or not.

It becomes apparent as the film unfolds that the director had to cut corners (the budget was repeatedly slashed according to van Eyssen) and gaping wide plot holes are hurriedly painted over with techno-babble and the extremely convenient occurrence of events.

However, despite these issues, the cinematography in places is excellent and van Eyssen uses inexpensive camera techniques very well demonstrating that stunning big screen effects can be achieved without a Battlestar-sized budget.

A little bit of background info putting this movie into context will make it much more interesting and it's an enjoyable example of the potential of director David van Eyssen.

Just watched this on DVD. Potentially a good idea, spoiled by woeful direction and some of the worst acting I have seen outside of a school play. Sean Astin puts in a reasonable performance and Vinnie Jones tries hard, but the rest of the cast was appalling. It's almost as if the principal cast was signed up, locations scouted, and then they knocked on doors at their locations and asked people if they wanted to be in a movie. The story had promise but it all fell in a heap. Awful. Time travel movies can tend to be disjointed, but if it's done well it all makes sense in the end. This makes sense it just doesn't seem worth the effort of watching. I ended up sticking with it till the end and was not rewarded for my efforts.

I really believe a fourth grader could have written better dialog and plot. The idea for this movie creates tremendous potential which is totally wasted on sheer stupidity of conversation and illogical plot. Movies involving time travel can be tricky but if done right, can also be very thought provoking. This movie doesn't even try to go there. This movie, like so many scifi's today, is overly focused on special effects with the plot and dialog treated as an afterthought. I'll have to remember the name, David Van Eyssen, and make concerted efforts NOT to watch anything directed by him. Foolish waste of time. I really have nothing more to say about this movie but the submission filter wants more lines. So here they are.

An interesting time-travel-correct-your-mistakes story with a lot of possibilities, unfortunately told by a director who seems to be far more interested in slow motion car crashes (and ludicrous gunbattles) than in telling a coherent story. It also doesn't help that the dialog is often laughable, and spoken too quickly and/or flatly (especially by Sean Astin -- but that too is the director's fault. I'm not sure van Eyssen was actually paying attention during dialog scenes. It's clear that if he was paying attention, he wasn't interested in it.)

Perhaps with a different director this would have been a clever little film, but alas not. This was filmed as if it was a very long commercial (indeed, the director's experience appears to be entirely in the realm of television commercials), rather than a conventional movie. Perhaps this style appeals to audiences whose attention spans are all microscopic (and so the fact that many scenes don't make sense even internally, must less to the rest of the movie) -- because they simply are incapable of noticing such flaws. But I sure as heck did.

For you budding directors who want to make films, please use this movie as an example of what not to do. Don't show off, don't try to be 'impressionistic' -- it's clear that the monumentally pretentious positioning and use of the camera was intended this way -- don't use flash cutting and vary the film speed just because you saw in in a Tarantino flick, a music video, or someone else's commercial. Just tell the flippin' story, OK?

... hey, mentioning QT: *that's* where I saw that whole stupid bank-robber subplot in this flick that didn't matter -- "natural born killers" (from me, this is NOT a compliment, by the way.) And I am STILL trying to figure out that whole cell-phone tower thing... But give this a pass -- a great little movie idea that didn't get the story-telling it deserved.