Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Under ‘Genre’ for director Ray Karwell’s low budget opus ‘Time Again’ you will see the word ‘Action’. Never has a truer word been spoken because if nothing else, ‘Time Again’ is an action flick down to its very soul. Is it a good action flick? Well… that’s debatable but we can say it is a hard working and earnest action flick, that’s for damn sure.

Not surprisingly our film opens with an action sequence. Sisters Sam (Tara Smoker) and Marlo (Angela Rochelle) are bickering on top of a roof while simultaneously being brutalized by the dapper Mr. New (Fred Eric Anderson). Get used to the bickering sisters. Suddenly, top cop Detective Lym (John T. Woods) shows up blasting away recklessly at Mr. New, a shootout ensues and Marlo convinces Sam that if they are going to survive they need to jump off this roof. That’s crazy. But guess what, all that stuff we just saw hasn’t even happened yet. It’s a little complicated.

So there’s this criminal mastermind named Mr. Way (Scott F. Evans) who has had his crew steal some stuff for him and his Fence has made the unwise decision of stealing from this stolen stuff. Never a good idea. What he has stolen are magical coins that once belonged to Julius Caesar and are rumored to possess amazing powers over time and space. Mr. Way needs these coins, either to go back in time or jump ahead to the future, to reshape America back into the superpower it once was. That’s what he said.

What does a pair of bickering sisters have to do with any of this? Well, the diner the sisters work at happens to be in the same building as this thieving fence’s office, and in an effort to keep from getting murderized he tries to palm these coins off as a tip to get them out his hands. It doesn’t work and for one of the sisters the resulting gun fight ends very badly.

Fast forward a bit and we have one sister who is very sad and we have one angry criminal mastermind who still doesn’t have his magical coins. He reasons, rather

illogically, that the surviving sister must have his coins and proceeds to punch her in the gut. Come on Mr. Way, that was kind of unnecessary but we have learned that Mr. Way, if nothing else, is a dick. That’s when top cop Lym shows up again to save the day, not that little sister Marlo appreciates this since it is clear that bickering is simply part of the young woman’s genetic makeup.

Now things start to get a little more complicated. Back at the diner Marlo meets an old lady (Gigi Perreau) who knows an awful lot about her and thinks she might be able to help save her sister. How she can do this considering her sister is dead and all is a mystery but the next thing you know, Marlo is magically transported back to when it all happened with a chance to make things right. The only problem is that Mr. Way is back there too and no matter how hard the girl tries, Mr. Way always finds a way to screw everything up. The coins are getting low and time is running out.

I hate to admit this, considering that I am a semi-professional, highly respected reviewer of film… at least in certain enclaves of Istanbul… but I had watched 1987’s ‘American Ninja II’ before I watched ‘Time Again’ and then watched the Sci-Fi Channel original ‘Swamp Shark’ after I saw ‘Time Again’, the point being that sandwiching ‘Time Again’ between those two cinematic masterpieces probably made director Ray Karwell’s movie appear far better than it actually was, but since I don’t know this for sure we’re going to have assume that it just far better than I thought it would be.

Since this is an action movie and as we pointed out it takes that genre deadly serious, the movie does move. Folks get shot at, shot at some more, irritating chicks get punched in gut, bitch slapped, a retard started shooting at folks, dudes get choked, tazed and shot at some at some more. And it was all pretty much non-stop. In fact, the only time the movie slowed down was to hear these sisters argue with each other. The acting was solid, particularly Scott F. Evans as the smooth Mr. Way, and John T. Woods as our earnest detective. We gotta admit though, for a criminal mastermind Mr. Way sure did a lot of his own footwork. Personally, I’d have my lackey’s chasing irritating chicks around and punching them in the gut, though I imagine ‘Time Again’ was probably little light on the lackey budget.

Naturally, there are challenges to deal with. Hell if I know where that old lady came from. I knew who she was but I have no idea where she came from. While the action was plentiful, the shoot and hide and shoot and hide routine got a little repetitive after a while, I did notice the occasional gap in continuity, and it’s probably never a good thing to find yourself rooting for the bad guy, who we readily admit is an absolute asshole, if for no other reason when he punches the sisters into unconsciousness, this briefly shuts them up. We are not proud of this.

Nonetheless, ‘Time Again’ looked good, it sounded great, it moved fast and it was more entertaining than ‘Swamp Shark’. That’s a winning combination where I come from.