Returner (2002)

If you'd ever try to imagine a mix of "Terminator", "Matrix", "E.T." and "Transformers", the result... well, most probably won't look like "Returner", but for some Japanese back around year 2000 seems that was the sum of all these. And it's so bad that it's (almost) good...

In 2080 and something, on an Earth invaded by aliens, the humanity is at the verge of extinction. Somewhere just before the last explosion, a girl jumps into "the last resort" = a wormhole to the past, with the purpose of preventing the first contact and all the disasters following - that's the "Terminator" part. The time bubble opens over a cargo ship used for human trafficking exactly in the middle of a fight between the members of a Triad and a guy seemingly coming from "Matrix" based on his apparel and moves (bullet-time effect included). To get "E.T." into the picture, after a while we find out that the first alien stranded from outer space is not hostile and just wants to go back home + doesn't resemble the terminating machines from the future and looks more like Spielberg's version from '82. For the "Transformers" piece, well... the trailer speaks for itself.

Each individual piece of the movie is sufficiently good and has some sort of originality (depite the above references) that would've led to a pretty decent result. Unfortunately, even if in the first half there's some acceptable flow, after this the action is so messed up when all bits are put together (= from plot holes and maximum predictability to just bad editing) that what's left in the end looks more like an indie movie made by some students between midterm exams. Don't get me wrong.. again, on each part (except the editing) we can say something good - for the budget it has the VFX are more than fine, the acting is ok, the camera work is quite nice on some frames especially on the chromatic side, and for the score we have some mixes of techno/synth with punk rock that give a retro-SciFi feeling reminding of the year when the movie was released. The lack of polishing is, however, terrible and brings a lot of damage to the final product. Still, if you have some memories left from the end of '90s - beginning of 2000's there's a good change of some pleasant nostalgia :)

Rating: 3 out of 5 (barely...)