Paradox (2016)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

A few weeks ago after having browsed through Netflix sci-fi movies I seen a synopsis with potential and what looked like a picture of Colin Farrell starring in 'Paradox'.Within the first minute or so of hitting play I realised it was a 'TV movie' type production and turned it off. Tonight I stuck it on in the background and after a few minutes I knew I had watch it through to be able to write an honest review.The acting was almost like the first try at a play by a bunch of strangers who never knew each other and hadn't acted before. It had a feel of being filmed by a single camera. A top secret basement unknown by all top organisations is being used to house a cutting edge time travel machine. On the walls of this cutting edge facility are a few fluorescent tube lights attached vertically (with wires trailing around), some red beacons and a white board with sums on it. Next to a wall mounted first aid box are some 1970's oscillators on a shelf. There are a couple of machines with flashing lights, I think these might be the ones Ivan Drago's team had in Rocky IV. A desk hosts a flexible desk lamp, some pencils in a tub, a chunky black PC keyboard and a couple of monitors - one showing a pink wave animation and the other showing the view in front of it...The time travel podium resembles a stand in a music shop with a few wires running up the metal columns. The head of this elite group of time travellers resembles Morpheus with an English accent, and the team are all wearing grey overalls (they may also work at a tyre garage during the day?) Once all of the city power is turned off to fire the music podium lights to life, Colin Farrell travels forward an hour only to find a body on the ground with the head replaced by a puddle of soup. The basement speakers then announce 1970's James Bond style that the self destruct countdown is about to commence (as a handy reminder the lighting turns into strobe lighting). The small corridor in this cutting edge facility basement has a couple of alphabet letters on the wall, an elevator (complete with voice to announce when it isn't working) and a few doors reminiscent of living room doors. I couldn't help but realise how my local gym corridor looks more modern than this.The guys go into a room with another flexible desk lamp to discuss what to do about this situation, as a swat team enter the building up at ground level. Apparently the elevator is the only link between floors (none of the living room doors have a staircase behind them?...) For some reason one of the grey overalls team is confined to a basic wheelchair, he stays to watch the fuzzy footage brought back on a camcorder by Colin Farrell. At this point we see a sinister person dressing up in a gas mask and creep around like something from 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'. The elite forces up at ground level have called an electrician in by now who has "Heard you got a problem?". After opening a wall box and exclaiming "Shitkegs burnt wires?!" he reassures them that this will take a while.Meanwhile back in the hospital basement the tyre fitters are opening some 1980's metal lockers, having managed to get past the 4 digit padlocks. Colin Farrell and his girlfriend sit on office desk chairs and type on the chunky PC keyboard, managing to summon up some 1980's style green digits that scroll up the screen (did Morpheus bring a disk from the Matrix?) In the background we see stickers on boxes such as 'Fragile', 'This Side Up', Electrical Material'. Colin gets upset when he finds out that his girlfriend is really a spy who lied to him, as I Know What Gas Mask You Wore Last Summer creeps around in the dark with his green night vision goggles.Morpheus is going around in circles in another dark room with lots of twinkly lights, before being brought back to the room with a world map on the wall and tied to a pipe by Colin and spy girlfriend. Eventually Morpheus owns up that he is in fact American, pulls out his Matrix mini disc and reveals that Colin Farrell has nose bleed and a headache due to brain damage from travelling through time. Wheelchair guy does some pretend acting and whimpers that there's nothing they can do to change their fate, to which Spy Girlfriend exclaims... "F**k!" To cut a long story short there ends up being 3 Colin Farrells, I Know What Gas Mask You Wore Last Summer starts talking like Jigsaw and fights with Spy Girlfriend, more self destruct strobes flash, the elite forces / swat team upstairs sit around in silence the entire time doing nothing, the elevator shaft gets engulfed by some cgi fire in the foreground, Spy Girlfriend and Jigsaw climb up the red elevator shaft surrounded by endless yellow cgi petals rising, the swat team realise they can pull the elevator doors open after all and pull the only remaining survivor out of this situation and shine their gun mounted flashlights in her face for no apparent reason. To end the picture we see Spy Girlfriend sitting in the back of the cop car looking like she's just seen the final cut.Nice to see that there are some excellent reviews for this movie. Lets just hope they weren't written by people sitting in grey overalls.

The manipulation of time is my favorite form of Science Fiction, it also happens to be the most difficult to write. Alternate histories, time travel, and of course paradoxes, can very easily go from entertaining to confusing to unwatchable in the blink of an eye. There is a very fine line between explaining too little, confusing audiences, and explaining too much, hence boring them to death with the scientific stuff. Lucky for us, not only does the new Sci-Fi thriller, Paradox manage to find that line, but much like it's story, it manages to come back to it over and over again. The story seems like a rather basic one, as a group of scientist are hired by a mysterious billionaire, to create a machine for the purposes of time travel. On this day, the group is pretty confident that they have completed the machine and will be sending one member, one hour into the future. The test works perfectly, only when the man arrives an hour into the future, he finds the lab is a mess and many of his colleagues are dead, hence the paradox. Will going back to warn everyone cause what he just saw or will it prevent it? Paradox is one of those films where it isn't about the acting, any decent actor could have been cast, it's the story that matters and the story was fantastic. The way they manage to utilize the machine and equipment that you never even noticed, or how they amp up the mystery by making everyone have that one thing that could make them a possible suspect, just makes the film that much more intense. This was honestly one of my favorite movies of 2016, and believe it or not, it was Written/Directed by a completely unlikely source. After seeing this, I had to know who wrote it and to my surprise, it was Michael Hurst, a guy who until now had only written some B-horror movies and directed some Xena episodes!?! This time he tried something different and may have found his true calling. If you love science fiction and a great mystery on top of that, you won't find many films that combine the two with the ease and satisfaction of Paradox.

It is not a good movie, but fun to watch. The idea of time travel can have some promising story lines and this movie tries to incorporate some of these ideas (Casual loops, Novikov self- consistency principle). The execution of the time travel loops is a bit shabby and you have to pay attention because it is easy to miss a "plot" point due to the fast pacing. Especially towards the end of the movie I couldn't follow exactly what was going on... to fast and also bad writing.The story has a lot of loose threads, silly plot twists, very bad dialogue and useless sub-plots (why incorporate the cop/NSA plot into it and not keep it focused on the time travel loops?). Writers could have done a better job on this one, but I still was compelled to keep watching and was interested in how it worked out in the end because time travel can be awesome (Primer, anyone?).Zoë Bell kicks some ass and adds a bit of talent to the cast, but most of the acting is not believable. Especially the "main" character (though the actor didn't have a lot of great material to work with) does a bad job.

This is a film about time travel, and about a mystery.It is complex, fast, and not for the lazy of mind. It is too difficult to figure out on first glance.But it is great entertainment.Of course, Zoe Bell is awesome. She's great to watch in a movie because she's a good actress, but also she was a stunt double, and exudes a sense of power that most actresses don't.You have to pay attention.It's a great evening of fun. A low-budget thriller, well written, and well acted. In a short period of time all of the actors have developed a sense of character. All are good actors, although none are familiar.and it even has some humor.Enjoy an evening of fun, challenge, and good movie making.