Primer
Time travel is hardly a unique subject matter for the movies, which usually try to tackle it through humor and adventure to varying degrees of success (Time Bandits, Back to the Future). Occasionally, Hollywood even lets an intriguing approach like 12 Monkeys escape the factory. Primer, made in and around Dallas on a budget of about $7,000, is certainly not Hollywood. It's also not particularly funny or adventurous. But despite its low budget and unorthodox approach to storytelling, it is definitely intriguing. Writer/director Shane Carruth is a self-taught filmmaker and, for better or worse, it shows. There's way too much inside baseball in this film, and I'm not referring to the physics behind the time travel device. The script is so bare on details it's a struggle to understand who is who and how the characters are related to each other. Carruth probably cut out this information during various drafts because he knew how it all connected together; but he forgot that we don't. It really hurts the narrative and takes some focus away from where it all should be: the scientific and moral implications of the paradoxes these two amateur inventors have created. But the concept is more than absorbing enough to stir the brain real good while trying to unravel the convoluted mess these guys have made of the space-time continuum. My advice: Watch it with some friends, then head over to the local pub for a long, alcohol-aided discussion of just what the hell is happening in this very nifty little production.
- July 1, 2007
DVD Details/Extras
Anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1; Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; audio commentary tracks by Carruth and some of the cast; a Primer trailer; promos for other New Line movies.