Also deep in the heart of Texas, former hostage negotiator Karen Warren
(superbly played with great vigor by Kylie Travis) is driving along a lonely highway. She quit
her job after a hostage situation went horribly wrong, and now she's back home
in Texas to try and regroup. But things go awry when Karen has a minor car
accident and must accept a ride from Frank (James Belushi) and Rayanne (Shannon
Whirry) who on the surface appear to be just another normal couple out for a
spin in their Caddy.
However, in a smart, confident performance, Belushi reveals that there is much
more to his character than the crass, good ole boy persona that he projects. It
turns out that Frank--in the capable hands of Belushi--is not only a criminal,
but a full-fledged psychopath who blows away everyone and everything that gets
in his way. Karen, using her skills as a former police officer, manages to escape before
Frank could kill her. Unarmed and trapped in the Texas desert wasteland, with
Frank in murderous pursuit, Karen runs towards the only building she sees for
protection. That building turns out to be the research lab where Brian is
working on his time machine. Karen is inadvertently sent back in time, where
she finds herself once again sitting in the back seat of Frank's Caddy, well before
Frank's bloody rampage. Realizing that she has somehow traveled through
time, Karen swears to do everything in her power to stop Frank this time before he
can hurt anybody.
And so begins the wildest, most chaotic,
and enjoyable time travel rides since
the Terminator movies. Karen, now armed with the knowledge of future events, is
determined to set things right--only to wind up unintentionally making things
even worse than before. So Karen keeps fleeing back to Brian's lab, and being
sent back in time, in an attempt to correct earlier
mistakes. And yet each time she goes back, the situation gets more and more crazier,
with enough death and destruction to rival the
apocalypse itself. And at the center of all of this chaos is Frank, with his
wild-eyed, go-for-the-gusto manner. Belushi does such a great job at creating a
memorable villain, this his Frank has become sort of a redneck Terminator. The
filmmakers pay such careful attention to the minute details
of their time travel story, that when they do miss one detail (such as when
Belushi's character uses a revolver that keeps shooting without ever needing to reload) it
comes as a shock. Still,
Retroactive is a fun, agreeable romp--think of it as The Time Machine meets
Natural Born Killers--for fans of both science fiction and action movies. --SF