Timeline

Michael Crichton’s Timeline read like a movie treatment.  I didn’t mind.  Crichton, after all, had no qualms about his status as a mainstream writer.  He crafted marketable thrillers, which is no mean feat.  He also managed to work the fruits of his research into them, using a vehicle like Timeline to give the reader a crash course in medievalism.

The filmed version of Timeline eschews all that medievalist nonsense, other than to use it as a pretense to move from one action bit to another.  It’s aided in this by able performers Paul Walker (who earned my goodwill through the underappreciated RUNNING SCARED), Gerard Butler, David Thewlis, and Neal McDonough; as well as a Brian Tyler score that tells us exactly what to feel and when to feel it.  But action without context has no meaning.  TIMELINE the film fails to create the context that will make the audience care who’s killing whom and why.

See, here’s the deal: a team of medievalist archeologists travels back in time to France in the 1350s.  An English force menaces the village and keep of Castlegard, and the film’s intrepid heroes join forces with the Frenchmen to save the day for, uh, French stuff.  But so what?  What’s so bad about the English, anyway?  I mean, I like Newcastle Brown Ale.  Add that the English lord prosecuting this particular attack is genre favorite Michael Sheen, while the French leaders are no-names, and I’m thinking, ‘Blimey, let’s save these Frogs from eating snails and turn ‘em on to the glories of shepherd’s pie.’

Which, of course, leads us to the problem with taking sides in any feudal-era battle.  As a member of the peasant class, what do I care which nobleman is oppressing me?  Whether it’s a Valois or a Plantagenet stealing the fruits of my labor, I get ripped off either way.

Whoah, settle down, Trotsky.  This isn’t about to become an explication of dialectic materialism’s application to the medieval era.  I’m just sayin’.

Back to the movie.  TIMELINE gives me perfectly acceptable heroes, but it gives me no reason to root for them, to believe in their cause.  Neither does it teach me anything about the medieval era in general or the Hundred Years’ War in particular.  In other words, it fails to achieve any reason for existing.  Give this one a pass.