TV on DVD: “5ive Days to Midnight”
By stephanie - Monday, January 2nd, 2006
“5ive Days to Midnight” is a darn good example of everything that can go wrong with a film about a time paradox. Timothy Hutton barely saves this mini-series, and only because he’s darn likeable.
But let me explain, as briefly as I can, the true problem with this tale. As I mentioned, it is a time paradox tale. And as you know (probably from watching oodles of Star Trek), good time paradoxes wrap things up in a way that leaves you scratching your head but accepting that it *could* be possible. (Though, granted, I was never a fan of such logic…but I have seen it done well.)
Here, unfortunately, we have the laziest time paradox writing ever. To whit: Our lead in question is a physics professor who receives a mysterious briefcase from the future telling him that he will be murdered in five days.
Soon, things start happening that prove to him this is real.
Fine enough.
Then, he goes to crazy but brilliant physics student. “Figure this out,” says the physics professor. “Find out if we can change it.”
The student does all sorts of ridiculous calculations and comes to the amazing conclusion that EVERYTHING that happens is all part of some grand design. If you changed the future, then the universe could unravel! Time could disappear! All sorts of horrible things could happen!
SPOILER AHEAD!
In spite of these dire warnings, the professor does indeed, change the future. Once this happens, we get no explanation of why or how this fits in with the supposed physics of it all.
Now see, if they hadn’t gone to all the trouble of making the darn lead character a physics professor, and then calculating the timeline probabilities, then we’d just have some dumb movie that ultimately made no sense but was perhaps vaguely interesting.
But once they brought science into it, they really owed their viewers something a bit more sensible and concrete.
Besides, as I’ve said before, we’ve seen this a zillion times already on Star Trek, and usually done much better. (Star Trek Voyager’s “Year of Hell” episode series comes to mind.)
If I could go back in time, I’d erase this film and insert something better in its place. Alas.
January 2nd, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Wow, for a moment there I wondered how I could have missed a new SciFi type show on TV.
Now I know how I missed it.