Slipstream (1989)
Director: Steven Lisberger
Starring: Mark Hamill, Bob Peck, Bill Paxton
Synopsis:
A crook steals a suspected murderer from a fanatical lawman to claim the bounty for himself.
Impressions:
What happens when you take the producer of the Star Wars OT, the director of TRON, Luke Skywalker, Robert Muldoon, and Private Hudson and toss them in a blender with a bit of Hagrid, Gandhi and Chattar Lal for spice? Well, you get this movie, I guess. Now, in the opening scene you get this orchestral score that seems wildly out of place for this low-budget scifi flick. I thought maybe it was just a public domain recording or something repurposed by the filmmakers, but then I see that the composer is Elmer Bernstein heading up the London Symphony Orchestra. Guess they were having a coupon day or something. (Or, more likely, Gary Kurtz pulled some strings to make it happen.)
Anyway, the basic plot is fairly straightforward. A man from the wrong side of the tracks (not that there's much of a right side of the tracks left in this setting) takes a chance at a big score, losing sight of the prize as he slowly gets attached to his meal ticket. The post-apocalyptic setting and other scifi elements are mostly window dressing at first, until we start to dig deeper into Byron's true nature. At times it feels like the story is grasping at bigger concepts than it's equipped to tackle, but even if it doesn't quite succeed in this regard, it does give the film a little more depth. The individual episodes along the way may come off as a bit too short to be properly developed, leaving me to wonder if this might've been better suited for a TV miniseries or something.
I do feel like there's potential that wasn't quite reached, but I'll give it credit for trying. If you're looking for a more polished, well-realized story, you'll probably want to look elsewhere, but if you're willing to take it for what it is, you might just find the experience worthwhile. Scifi fans should appreciate it, but for general audiences, it's more of a maybe.
Rating:50/50