For a start, there's a hair-raising plane crash ahead of the opening credits. But your scalp is not unassailed after that. The detective work on the plane wreckage has its own kind of spookiness: Why did the co-pilot cry out that the passengers were already dead and burned before impact? Why is that recovered wristwatch running backwards? And what is the interest here of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist? ("I'm simply looking for the inexplicable. I usually find it, too.") To top it off, there's a mysterious blonde bombshell tossed in ("You're right up there in the Top Ten of my 'weird' list, lady." "If you knew me better, I'd be Number One"). What ultimately comes out of all this is some deft handling of the paradoxes of time travel: paradoxes not dodged but bravely faced up to in the form of beam-rattling "time-quakes." (Deft cinematic handling as well: the altered camera angles throughout the period of time "relived" were a fine inspiration.) The screenwriter, John Varley, is an accredited s-f and fantasy man, and this adaptation of his own short story, "Air Raid," is a genuine piece of science fiction; furthermore, a genuine piece of just plain fiction: well-constructed, clever, as coherent as it need be. With Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, and Daniel J. Travanti; directed by Michael Anderson. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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