A Sound of Thunder

A Sound of Thunder (2004): I had never heard of this little gem and the write up made it appear like a really bad B movie but I gave it a try anyway and found a gold nugget. Based on a short story by SiFi master Ray Bradbury, this Euro produced, Czech Republic shot flick was much better than expected and handled its time travel theme with aplomb. Set in Chicago about 50 years in the future, it proposes that time travel allows people to go back in time and hunt dinosaurs for a very high price. Most of future Chicago is digitized but done so with some Imagineering as to what will evolve as skyscrapers in half a century. Even the famous Chicago El is shown in a modern double decked form. And this is one of those rare movies set in the future that still shows traffic congestion on city streets and even though the vehicles are clearly digital images, they are done reasonably well. Starring Sir Ben Kingsley and Edward Burns, it shows what might happen if something is inadvertently changed in the past. You get a massive butterfly effect (literally) as Chicago is hit by time waves that start radically changing things. The crew of the time travel company must desperately search to find out what was changed in the past and then try to prevent it from happening before humanity is evolved out of existence. While this is primarily and action movie, it stays within its time travel boundaries and even allows a few paradoxes along the way. While not a great movie, it is a pretty good action SF adventure movie that should keep you interested for its almost two hour length. The move is rated PG for: scientist’s sleepovers, deadly ice bullets, gnarly plants, thorny plants, deadly plants, apelike reptiles, reptile-like apes, subway serpents, big bad bugs, tropical Chicago, and for the extremely high attrition rate of time travelers.