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Year:	2003
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Richard Donner
Genre:	Time travel guff
Starring:	Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Billy Connolly
Rating:	2/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0300556/
Tagline:	They had to travel into the past to save the future
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

Doing time travel justice is bloody tricky.

The plot:
A man flees through a forest, pursued by a knight on horseback. Seconds before the knight cuts him down, the man vanishes, only to reappear in the desert.
Apparently dying, he whispers one word: Castlegard.
In France, a professor and his team of students are excavating ruins, when they discover a tomb. Writings on the tomb indicate that it is some 700 years old.
When the professor disappears, the students find evidence that he has somehow travelled back in time. ITC, the company the professor was working for informs them that he has been transported back to the 14th century, and and that they, too, must head back, to save the professor, and ensure history is not corrupted.
Arriving in 1357, the group soon become embroiled in a bitter conflict, that may well end their lives, and the timeline as we know it…..

What a crock of shit.
I’m a sucker for sci-fi.
Bloody love it.
Also, Michael Crichton – on whose book this is based – has always conceived decent enough ideas. Science Gone Bad. That’s his thing. Whether it’s dinosaurs rampaging out of control in Jurassic Park, androids rampaging out of control in Westworld or a man made virus....erm....rampaging out of control in The Andromeda Strain, his concepts tend to have enough hard science in them to at least make them plausible.
OK, maybe not Westworld, but the rest do.
Well, perhaps not Jurassic Park.
But still..
OK, not Andromeda Strain either. Look, just fuck off, will you?
Here, radical departures were apparently made from the premise of the book, none of them good, judging by the end result.
There’s a few issues.
Firstly, when dealing with time travel and the potential for distortions of the timeline, it is essential that everything is crystal clear to the viewer. Explain it, crystallise it, don’t overcomplicate it. Here, at no point is anything explained with any degree of satisfaction, it’s simply glossed over, before the characters run around a bit more waving swords.
It’s really bloody confusing.
Secondly, don’t cast Paul Walker in anything. He is absolutely fucking useless, with all the on screen charisma of a distended colon.
Thirdly, if the characters are meant to be French, here’s a thought: cast French people.
Don’t cast Anna Friel, and then ask her to do a French accent. By the sounds of it, she has never actually heard a French person speak, as this seemed to be some bizarre mix of Serbian and Italian, with perhaps a trace of Norwegian thrown in for good measure.
Oh, and one last thing: don’t insult your audience by trying to get them to believe that the French spoken in 1357 is exactly the same as the French spoken today.
We’re not fucking idiots.
Genuinely insulting, tortuously overlong at one hour forty five, this is only spared the lowest mark by the presence of Billy Connolly, who at least adds a touch of class for the limited time he is on screen.
Fucking awful.