'Thunder' is hardly earthshakingbut tells a satisfying tale nonetheless

Friday, September 2, 2005

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

Clearly, the folks at Warner Bros. have few hopes for their sci-fi adventure "A Sound of Thunder." After being kicked around the release schedule for what seems an eon, it finally has been unceremoniously dumped on the market with the rest of the late-summer movie stinkers.

MOVIE REVIEW

A SOUND OF THUNDER

DIRECTOR: Peter Hyams

CAST: Edward Burns, Catherine McCormack, Ben Kingsley

RUNNING TIME: 102 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for sci-fi violence, partial nudity and language

GRADE: B-

LINKS/TRAILERS
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It's the only big studio release in recent memory at which I was NOT searched for recording devices at the preview screening or watched throughout the movie by stern-looking security guards pacing up and down the aisles with sniper-scopes. Pirate away, guys.

The movie is almost completely devoid of those exploitative elements that constitute what studio executives consider "youth appeal." Though he tries hard for bravado, hero Edward Burns is terminally wooden. The movie's test scores must have been appalling.

Moreover, the title is bad, the romantic chemistry is non-existent, the dramatic scenes often are embarrassingly clunky and, by the standards of Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," the end-of-the-world special effects are decidedly cheesy.

And yet I must confess that I enjoyed this misfire more than most of the summer '05 movies simply because its premise -- based on a Ray Bradbury story about time-tourists in 2055 who screw up the whole course of human evolution -- is so fascinating.

Also, while the script does nothing Oscar-worthy with the idea, it manages to stay on course and reasonably true to the spirit of Bradbury. While the characters' reactions to their plight are consistently ludicrous, the narrative is compelling and the movie's storytelling works.

At the same time, the action direction -- by Peter Hyams ("Outland," "2010") -- is decent, the visuals of mid-21st-century Chicago are fun and there's a delicious performance by Ben Kingsley as a sleazy capitalist whose criminal cost-cutting causes all the problems.

In the end, this movie has a lot of the charm of those clumsy but well-remembered sci-fi movies of the '50s. Despite its cardboard characters and technical ineptness, it's earnest, unpretentious and, overall, surprisingly entertaining.