A Sound of Thunder
A SOUND OF THUNDER (12)
D: Peter Hyams
Warner Bros/Franchise Pictures (Moshe Diamant, Howard Baldwin
& Karen Baldwin)
US/UK/Germany/Czech Rep 2005
103 mins
Science Fiction
W: Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer & Gregory
Poirier [based on the short story by Ray Bradbury]
DP: Peter Hyams
Ed: Sylvie Landra
Mus: Nick Glennie-Smith
Edward Burns (Travis Ryer), Catherine McCormack (Sonia Rand),
Ben Kingsley (Charles Hatton), David Oyelowo (Marcus Payne), Jemima Rooper (Jenny Krase)
This film was absolutely ravaged by the critics and in truth
it is a huge mess.
It's a shame that the one of the companies in charge of the
production went bankrupt halfway through filming, leaving the movie looking pretty shoddy and like a cheap made-for-cable movie in the respect of production values, but the plot and idea isn't
all bad, at least theoretically.
Set in the future, businessman Ben Kingsley (miscast) makes
his fortune by selling 'time safaris', where the rich of society can literally time travel to a prehistoric age and shoot themselves a dinosaur. Strict rules are in place to ensure that a
butterfly effect doesn't take place, but guess what happens...
The performances are uneven and the CGI effects are absolutely
terrible (especially the monkey-dinosaurs) but overall this does slightly balance out with an interesting story (credit here belongs to Ray Bradbury), but the direction of the film is very poorly
executed.
Another film from Franchise Pictures which squandered a huge
amount of money. In this case, $80 million worth.
3/10
