~Cast~

Edward Burns....................Travis Ryer

Catherine McCormack.......Sonia Rand

Ben Kingsley......................Charles Hatton

Jemima Rooper.................Jenny Krase

David Oyelowo...................Tech Officer Payne

Directed by..........................Peter Hyams

My Rating:

 So everyone and their mother has said this movie sucked hardcore (how this is possible is beyond me seeing as how it only made 1.8 million which means NOBODY FUCKIN SAW THIS FILM!!!) so I went into this knowing it was going to be total garbage and wasn't expecting a damn thing. Usually, these kinds of films are either so bad that not even my lowest expectation could prepare me for them, or they turn out to be really good and I go on a one man war against the world to defend the honor of the movie. A Sound Of Thunder is neither of those for I was able to pinpoint exactly where this film became extinct and it was the Special Effects department. Not since BENEATH LOCH NESS have I seen such shitty CGI, in fact, the CGI is so bad on the big screen it makes SCI-FI Originals seem like ground breaking technology. Reason for this 80 Million dollar (you read that right) opus looking like a 500,000 dollar piece of prehistoric waste is because the production company funding this picture went belly up and it took almost 3 years for this to hit theatres. That is right folks, this was supposed to hit the big screen back in 2003 but instead it was left to collect dust and fossilize on the shelf that so many other long and forgotten about films rest upon. Unfortunately this did not get better with age...instead it only hurt the movie and when it finally gets released, it is never dusted off or cleaned up...I bet this didn't even go through a final cut for tons of scenes felt like they would have been taken out had it gone through the regular routine. Anyway...let's get to the story...

    A man named Charles Hutton (Kingsley) has found the secret to time travel and instead of using it for the good of man-kind he has made it into a money making safari for the super rich. People come from all over to travel through time to hunt prehistoric dinos that are just about to die, it felt like it was the most overpriced game of laser tag ever. On one of the trips, there is a malfunction in the main gun which causes two of the paying customers to run off and of course, they go off the trail which they are NOT supposed to do and therefore fuck things up for the people in the future. Time waves occur and evolution has changed...apparently it changed into 5 kinds of animals...a giant water snake, a monkey that is spliced with a crocodile, a pterodactyl, living vines and of course...the cockroach has survived. Now it's up to Travis Ryer (Burns) and Sonia Rand (McCormack)  as well as the team of hunters to find out what caused this ripple in time and attempt to fix it before all humans are forced into early extinction.

    Like I said the plot for this was NOT where the movie lost it's points, that lies therein the bad CGI and some very lame scenes that occur in the movie. For example, in the scene where Sonia is trying to explain to Ryer how big he has fucked things up, she goes to her window and says "24 hours.....see!" only to have a giant tidal wave or TIME RIFT appear and alter the present. Another thing was all the scenes where Ryer is walking through the city and we have long shots of him talking to people with futuristic cars flying by. The thing that got to me was that the cars, the city and everything around them is SO cheaply done, that anyone who doesn't need a seeing eye dog to take a piss can tell it's a green screen. They just insist on showing it for long periods of time...I can understand you have a couple of shots but not 5 minutes worth...and then another 5 minutes later on. If it looks that bad...DON'T show it. The movie isn't all bad though, I was entertained by this and the story I found to be interesting as well as some of the creatures concepts being cool.

    Acting wise, Edward Burns I have always enjoyed ever since I first saw him in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and there after in 15 MINUTES and CONFIDENCE. SOUND OF THUNDER is no different, while he didn't have the best script to work with, it was still good to see him. Catherine McCormack is one of two things, either a really bad actress or put on the thickest accent I have heard in years. Also the fact she speaks so fast when we first see her character that it had me straining to comprehend what she had just said. Ben Kingsley...Oh I'm sorry...SIR Ben Kingsley does a decent job in his paper thin, stereo-typical role, Let's just say Ben won't be using this movie when he sends out his resume to acquire movie roles in the future. Jermina Rooper plays a character who really doesn't stand out at all...in fact...when she is actually on screen...she ends up boring the shit out of me.  Directing wise, this movie has some decent things going on for it. Hymans knows how to direct this and even though the fossils were never polished to shine in a science museum, they still look halfway decent even with all the dirt on it. I've seen better (I prefer END OF DAYS to be honest) but I've also seen worse.

    To the gore, this is PG-13 folks so we really don't get much...thorns being ripped out and the after math of the wounds are the goriest thing in this...CGI dino blood...baboon/crocodile creatures shot in the neck and I believe that's it. OH! And a squished butterfly! For nudity, Rooper gets nude but we see nothing more then head, shoulders, knees and toes (sorry for the song) but the ladies get Burns shirtless so there...

    I say, A SOUND OF THUNDER could have been so much more then what it was, with WAR OF THE WORLDS, we saw how a 200 million dollar budget can be used effectively to make a realistic and kick ass end of the world movie. Here we see how 80 million dollars is wasted to make a film that studio's hope could cash in...but the 1.8 million in 7 days of it's release proves them wrong. This is one storm that I wouldn't mind hearing on DVD.