2:22 (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

2:22 (2018) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   99 minutes

Released         |   22 February 2018

cast

Teresa Palmer ... Sarah
Michiel Huisman ... Dylan
​

director

Paul Currie

writer

​Todd Stein ... (screenplay by) and
Nathan Parker ... (screenplay by)
 
Todd Stein ... (story by)

cinematographer

​David Eggby

music

​Lisa Gerrard
James Orr

film editor

​Sean Lahiff
Gary Woodyard

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box office result

Worldwide               $? million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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the best dialogue

Dylan: in everyone's life there comes a time when the universe open itself for just a few moments to show us what's truly possible

Dylan: A star shines brightest right before it dies.

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2:22 (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

2:22 (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

​A man's life is derailed when an ominous pattern of events repeats itself in exactly the same manner every day, ending at precisely 2:22 p.m.

2:22 (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 15 February 2018
Pop ​Movee Rating ⭐⭐

​2:22 is a movie that wants the viewer the get into a “New York state of mind”, but its story is so muddled, it descends into an incomprehensible mish-mash of filmic genres; all competing for attention based upon the fuzziest of MacGuffins. 

2:22 borrows liberally from many sources, but the film it seems most influenced by is James Ward Byrkit’s underrated 2013 science fiction, mystery, thriller COHERENCE...

Much like 2:22, Byrkit’s superior film structures its story around a cosmic event and uses it as the basis for the journey that characters take in COHERENCE. Unlike the clever cross-dimensional tripping of COHERENCE, 2:22 fails to build sufficient suspense to make it a true thriller or deliver a denouement that deliberately tries to twist the viewer’s own morality. 

No pun intended, but 2:22 is 98 minutes of by-the-numbers movie making. Paul Currie’s direction is solid, workmanlike effort, but Todd Stein and Nathan Parker’s screenplay doesn’t give him a great deal to work with, as the poorly-conceived plot negates any genuine character development and leads the viewer to some head-scratching WTF moments.

So, what’s it about?

Michael Huisman’s Dylan is an Air Traffic Controller who starts the film by having one almighty near-miss situation, narrowly averting the collision of two fully-laden jet passenger planes at New York’s JFK Airport after experiencing an event that can only be described as “astral projection”. At exactly 2:22, Dylan exits existence as he knows it and becomes “stuck in the moment”; the universe ticking back and forth, revealing its mysteries, but not allowing him to grasp the next moment ahead of him.

Why this has happened to Dylan will be revealed late in the piece, but the flimsiness of this confounding event is so unconvincing that even the most fair-minded viewer will wonder whether they should give 2:22 the benefit of the doubt OR use the emergency exit slide before this flight gets too much further down the runway…  Anyone familiar with air travel in any form will also scoff at what happens immediately after Dylan manages to snap himself free of the cosmic shift he’s just experienced. To do what he does to avert the impending airline disaster unfolding before him is simply ridiculous, exacerbated by the staggering, flippant reaction of his co-worker.

So, is there anything to recommend 2:22?

Thank goodness for Teresa Palmer!

Palmer’s early scenes give pause and, for a few minutes, there’s a terrible sense that her reasonably impressive body of work up to this movie is about to become horribly marred by a stilted, wooden performance. Fortunately, as the story progresses, this gorgeous young lady’s naturalistic acting ability and her affinity with the camera delivers the film’s only noteworthy character. Palmer’s Sarah becomes romantically involved with Dylan after the pair attend an aerial ballet one night. Dylan, with nothing better to do after having been suspended from his Air Traffic Controller role, has time to enjoy the nightlife and takes the opportunity to introduce himself to Sarah at the end of the show. 

The ensuing romance is swift, but it’s the most interesting element of 2:22.

If scribes Stein and Parker had spent a little more time developing Dylan and Sarah’s relationship in the film’s Second Act, the converging story threads brought together at its end may have resonated more profoundly and sensibly than the ending that Currie delivers. Sam Reid’s introduction to the story as Jonas, a player in the film’s emerging love triangle, simply doesn’t work. Jonas is an example of the make-up department getting a character’s look so wrong, it becomes a credibility problem for the film. It may be unfair, but the ridiculous ponytail hair thing he’s got going on is so annoying that it detracts from his performance; a performance that is already in question because he such a thinly-drawn character. All that’s missing from Jonas is a manicured, pencil-thin moustache and a Top Hat. Then 2:22 would have had a genuine villain!

For Australian audiences, there’s the cringe-inducing reaction to seeing talented Australian actors trying to do American accents. John Waters is Dylan’s boss and tries to say as little as possible. Smart move. Kerry Armstrong has a small role late in the film and approaches it with such melodramatic flourish that her accent is the last thing audiences will pick up on. Richard Davies, best known to Australian audiences as the goofy Jimmy Proudman on the TV series OFFSPRING, is Dylan’s colleague - Inky - who seems more impressed than horrified by the near fatality that happens at the film’s beginning. Nothing to see here… There’s no supporting performances that help to lift the film from the nadir it mires itself in thanks to its illogical premise.

Ultimately, 2:22 collapses in on itself, much like the astrological phenomenon that is central to unlocking the film’s plot…

The film has moments of enjoyment, but these are few and far between. Dylan’s “journey” is convoluted and his investigation circles back on itself far too many times, creating the impression that he’s caught somewhere between GROUNDHOG DAY and NOTTING HILL; except he isn’t. For a film that so reliant in impressing the need to understand that “there’s something cosmic going on”, the finale veers completely off the track, offering the most tenuous connections to explain what has been going on for the past hour and a half.

There’s a foot chase through the streets of New York...
There’s a madman with a gun on the loose in Grand Central Station…
There’s some kind of cosmic shock wave that brings the past and the present together for one fleeting moment…

2:22 tries to be profound. It’s not. It’s just confused. The shame of this is that all of the key behind-the-scenes personnel are talented filmmakers. It’s hard to believe the Nathan Parker co-wrote the Duncan Jones 2009 movie MOON, starring Sam Rockwell. 2:22 does nothing to show that he has gotten better with time... Unfortunately, 2:22 is not greater than the sum of its parts. Those parts are an amalgam of ideas borrowed from better material, cobbled together into a mildly engaging romance story built upon cosmic hokum that there’s a fate written for each and every person in the stars above!

2:22 MOVIE (2017) USEFUL LINKS

​2:22 (2017) - IMDb
​​2:22 (2017 film) - Wikipedia
​2:22 (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes

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