Saturday, June 19, 2021

Now Showing: The Past Before

The Past Before
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Writer: Harmony Winters
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Zazie Beetz, Christoph Waltz, Michael Keaton, Liam Neeson, Mark Rylance, Clancy Brown (voice)

Plot: Around 8:22 PM on December 26th, 2021 on a calm night, James Smith (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Riley (Zazie Beetz), who records everything on a camcorder, race through Washington, D.C., in an old Bonneville, chased by the police. Smith has a timer on his stopwatch with about an hour left on it. The Bonneville races toward the White House, smashing through barricades. The impact causes the vehicle ends up flipping over, allowing the police to get Smith and Riley.

Following, a now upset Smith's interrogated by Colonel Bodette (Michael Keaton), who wants info on how Smith got an XM-97 prototype. Smith explains they're all over the place at his home. Later, Bodette discovers a second James Smith is sitting in a D.C. jail. The bomb squad opens Bonneville's trunk. What's inside remains a mystery, but it's surprisingly impressive enough to get Defense Secretary Kronau (Christoph Waltz) and President Malloy's (Liam Neeson) attention. Thunderstruck, they all turn to Smith while his stopwatch alarm goes off. Knowing there's not much time left, Smith barks to know where Malloy was 48 hours ago, but Malloy's too shaken to respond.

Meanwhile, in the interrogation room, she hears metal scraping. As it grows louder, Malloy has led away without answering Smith. Meanwhile, Smith holds an iPhone that abruptly powers on.

Inside the interrogation room, Smith and Riley hear gunshots and screams. The shadow of something disturbing creeps into the interrogation room. Riley climbs up into the ceiling to escape with Smith after. Together, they move through, seeing signs of violence. Rushing through the White House, Bodette, Kronau, Malloy, and many Secret Service agents head to a safe room. Smith tells Riley nothing matters but only getting to Malloy. Smith tells her to say to him if she sees "him." "Him, who?" "Him, him," which terrifies Smith. After the agents get picked off one by one. Bodette, as a last-ditch effect to slow the creature down, Malloy and Kronau make it to a safe room, but the blast door's torn apart and Malloy gets drenched in Kronau's blood. Smith and Riley find a dying Malloy. Smith orders to know every detail of what's happening with Malloy 48 hours ago. Malloy dies as something huge arrives, coming after them. Trying to escape from the White House, Smith & Riley rush outside. He kills Riley. As Smith takes back the camcorder Riley's holding, he pushes some buttons on the iPhone, suddenly winking him out of existence without Riley…

48 hours ago, on December 24th. Exhausted, Smith weakly walks to a nearby bus station collapsing. Smith heads over to a coffee shop where Riley works. The thing is, she doesn't seem to know him at all. He apologizes, promising he won't let her die again. Smith leaves as Riley's baffled.

Meanwhile, Malloy and Kronau are at a funeral for the First Lady and Malloy's daughter, both of whom died in an unexpected and unfortunate plane crash. Smith steals a taxicab hauling ass to a D.C. street. At a tenement structure, he manufactures low-grade napalm and then "paints" something on the side of the building. As the Presidential motorcade drifts by, they stop as they see written in flames the President's top-secret distress code. They arrest Smith, who's come bearing gifts: a blood sample and finger belonging to Malloy, plus alien tissue samples. His camcorder can hold 300 TBs of data, containing footage depicting a horrifying alien attack meaning whatever Smith's told them has checked out.

Malloy, Kronau, and Bodette interrogate Smith. Smith explains that aliens will invade Earth seven years from now, but they have got a keen strategy to keep humans as an unending food source: For 24 hours, they gorge on humanity then jump back 48 hours, starting all over again. When they arrive, Smith used his own time-traveling device to travel back and spends 24 hours trying to warn the proper officials, and then he jumps back again. He can't travel further than 48 hours because his iPhone is actually an alien device written in an indecipherable language. If the aliens are so careful with their alien technology, Malloy asks how Smith got his iPhone. Smith explains that seven years from now, an old man out of nowhere gave it to him, showing him a five-button sequence to press. When asked where the old man's now, Smith sternly tells them he threw himself in front of the bus.

Smith demands to speak to a scientist named Dr. Constantine Oro (Mark Rylance), which Malloy approves despite Kronau's lack of enthusiasm. Looking at the global situation, Malloy spreads the military throughout. Smith explains to the military how to fight the aliens. The White House press secretary explains the country's at its highest alert but tells people not to panic, giving no further details. As Secret Service escort her out of her coffee shop, Riley's taken to the White House. On the ride over, she finds she's joined by Dr. Oro, who's just as confused as she is.

When left alone, Smith tries to explain to Riley that, in the future, they're married, which she doesn't buy. Malloy calls them both into the war room, where Riley notices the mortifying footage of Smith's camcorder's alien attacks and suddenly believing every word Smith says. Alone, Kronau asks Smith if he becomes President in the future, but Smith dodges the question. Oro examines Smith's iPhone, stunned such a small device provides the energy required to create a wormhole through time and space. Knowing Oro has a particular project, Smith & the convoy heads out to Oro Industries, an abandoned factory in a dumpy part of town.

In Oro's basement lab, a vast contraption built around an intricate mirror array waits for them. He made the military device, which would've allowed them to send brief warning messages a few minutes back in time if it'd been completed, but funding was cut before it was ever finished. Suppose they had the right amount of energy. In that case, the device could theoretically send anything and everything back in time at least 15 years. So Smith offers up his iPhone, suggesting they use its power source attached to the alien spaceships to send something back in time, giving them a more advanced warning. Oro doesn't believe he has nearly enough time for that. It's already 3 PM, and Smith says the aliens arrive like clockwork at 8 PM. On rare occasions, they'd show up earlier. Oro's terrified about the ramifications of sending a message to the past, which could possibly change everything. Noticing the pending doom ahead, they all acknowledge they don't have a choice.

Oro and Bodette study the video footage of the invasion. They realize all the ships are synced somehow, never accidentally crashing into each other. Whatever one ship does, the others do so if there's no leader, just an immense swarm of like-minded vehicles. Oro's also shocked to discover these aren't precisely spaceships. They're exclusively designed to operate in our atmosphere. Later, President Malloy addresses the nation, alarming them with an honest account of what's to come while including the video footage. Smith concocts a message to send to the past, which gets converted into binary code by a lab tech. Later, he sees Kronau altering the message somehow.

Meanwhile, Oro tears apart Smith's trusty iPhone to power his own time machine. As Oro works, Riley and Smith share their first real romantic moment, but it's interrupted when the iPhone hums to life with a shower of sparks, followed by the groan of metal. Smith checks his timer; there are only two hours left.

They've adjusted their schedule, so Oro tries to send the message and trips a breaker. It's not the time machine being powered by the ships, but a laptop with the news. Somebody's to reset the breaker, and Smith nominates himself which Riley is unsure about. Quiet but quick, Smith races through the lab, resets the breaker, and is pleasantly surprised no aliens have appeared to kill him until one appears. After a bit scuffle, Smith kills it with his XM-97. He returns to the basement, and they hide, fearing the cacophony they hear outside. Oro sends the message, he thinks, but nothing's changed. Smith orders Oro to put his iPhone back together. As they decide to flee the basement, and not a moment too soon, the "silhouetted dragon" seen earlier arrives. It eyes the mirror array with apparent intelligence. It understands what they've done. Smith tries to use the iPhone to send himself and Riley back in time, but it's no longer working. As aliens draw close to them, Smith realizes Oro put one of the components in upside-down. He flips it, the iPhone powers on, and he and Riley go back in time to December 23rd.

Smith and Riley are already surrounded by soldiers, and Kronau's now the President. Malloy's now a vice admiral, Bodette is a general, and Oro… is precisely the same. The world has changed significantly. D.C. is an urban war zone, glutted with the military, with the Pentagon expanded exponentially. Hundreds of millions died during riots following the initial panic after the message's announced. Military technology's improved to the point that these people are prepared for a future attack. They strap Smith into something uncomfortably similar to Farscape's Aurora Chair, which extracts Smith's memories to display them on some computer monitors. Kronau and the others can strategize for what they're up against. The memory videos instantly processed by the computer give vital information about the alien infrastructure. As Riley's dragged to a similar chair, she's surprised to see a display of Smith's memories of her, sweet, yet she dies over and over again in a different way every time. Needing everyone to fight if they stand a chance, Kronau and Malloy plan to send Smith and Riley to the front lines.

Inside a military chopper, Riley's pissed. Among other things, she's noticed Smith doesn't have a wedding ring, which Smith makes an excuse for. He sees Riley nervously fingering something. She explains a silhouetted dragon-like creature dropped in the sky just before they left. Smith panics, demanding they turn the chopper around. The pilot refuses, so Smith and Riley start to fight back, resulting in the helicopter inadvertently spinning out of control. Riley falls out of the aircraft onto the roof of a building where Oro awaits the end. Smith's also thrown out of the helicopter, landing on another top, before the chopper crashes. Rushing toward Bodette, Smith convinces him that one of the aliens has uncovered their plan.

To gain any little surprise element, Smith believes the only logical thing to do in that scenario is attack sooner. Kronau and Malloy gripe about this hitch in their strategy were based around a coordinated surprise attack to catch them off guard. They can't just change the plan. Outside, the groaning metal sound starts again. Ships and dragon-like aliens appear. This time, they're even more heavily armored than usual. Somehow, they know what to expect, having prepared for it. The streets of D.C. are instantly filled with carnage and panic. The silhouetted dragon, no longer silhouette now revealed as a one-eyed dragon, appears, sniffing around for something. On the emergency radio, multiple reports come in that major cities have fallen or are falling.

Riley drags a nearly unconscious Oro into the building. Smith, injured, meets her in the same building. Smith operates under the assumption that when Kronau confiscated his iPhone, he destroyed it. Dr. Oro knows Kronau didn't. Kronau's back at Oro's lab, using the iPhone to send yet another message back, feeding the past him some more information he can use for political gain. Smith, Riley, and Oro try to sneak through the streets of D.C. They arrive at a fire station and steal a truck. To draw the dragons' attention, Oro flips the siren on.

Climbing on the roof, Riley shoots the firetruck ladder at the aliens to hit some, and it falls, pulling the top off with it. As more dragons approach, it looks like they're done for when they all suddenly stop. They're suddenly deferential because dragon-queens have descended from something looking like a mothership. Smith, Riley, and Oro get down to the basement lab, but the one-eyed dragon's onto them. Agressively threatening Riley, the one-eyed dragon (voice of Clancy Brown) orders them to "undo" the messages they've sent back. Oro sends a message back to himself to disregard all the other news, which will revert the timeline. Despite complying with his order, the one-eyed dragon still tightens its claws around Riley's neck and then begins shooting blades at the others for trying to stop him. General Bodette suddenly appears, worse for wear, hitting the one-eyed dragon with a missile from a rocket launcher. This sends him away from Riley but doesn't kill him. Riley grabs some live wires and jams them into a puddle of water, which violently fries the one-eyed dragon's electronic brain implant.

Smith takes the iPhone and flees with Oro. Rather than merely going back another two days to warn the others like the previous times, Smith and Oro hatch a scheme. Realizing a low voltage overloads the alien's brain implant, they wonder what'd happen if they overloaded the computers in one of the ships. Since all the ships operate together as a hive mind mentality, they all go down if one goes down. Bodette leads them to a blood-spattered lab filled with high-tech equipment that allows them to analyze the ships. They map the boat and find the location of its control computer. Oro points out that it's a suicide mission if they go into a ship in the air, overload the computer, and then jump back in time, there'll be no ship, meaning they'll fall to their deaths. Despite this, they decide to go with it. As Smith, Oro, and Bodette prepare to leave, Riley's angry. She's finally found him, and now he's going to kill himself. Trying to protect her, Smith doesn't care. He hugs her, secretly duct-taping his iPhone to her back, which he activates. She shoves him away and disappears through time, pissed when she realizes what's happening.

Smith, Oro, and Bodette hitchhike on floating bodies to get inside the ship. They're forced to walk through a "scary dark corridor" to get to the computer control area. Several times, they're almost spotted, but they maintained to take cover. They get the drop on one, killing it, but not before it kills Bodette. They finally get to the computer, but Oro realizes it is protected by some force field; all they need to do is turn it off.

Only they can't figure out how to turn off the containment field. Finally, Smith's forced to punch a hole in the floor, which he tosses Bodette's body. In turn, Bodette's body hits impactfully into the force field, overloading the ship. As energy amasses, threatening to destroy them, another one-eyed dragon appears. He does kill Oro, and Smith flees. In his attempts to escape, Smith tumbles right out of the ship, followed by the one-eyed dragon. Smith clings to a floating body. Smith grabs his gun, shoots the one-eyed dragon in his one eye, then grasps his iPhone continuing to fall. Smith swan dives as he enters the sequence, disappearing through time and space before hitting the surface.

A few days earlier, Riley races through the city to Oro Industries. Riley finds Smith in a pool of his own blood. Deathbed confessional, Smith, admits she never married him. Smith couldn't even get a date with her. After the invasion happened, they fell in love with one another, forcing himself to continually save her, whether she loved him back or not in any of the timelines. Crying heavily, She cradles Smith as he dies.

During Christmas day, Riley's sitting at the café, watching the news report about the First Lady and Malloy's daughter skipping their flight, avoiding a future catastrophic disaster. Another report shows Oro getting arrested for charging a Presidential podium and demanding he allocates a grant. Smith arrives at the café to meet up with Riley. He's surprised that a total stranger bailed him out of the pen. Curious, he asks if they know each other somehow. Riley smiles, thinking about something, then says, "Not yet." She asks him if he'd like to go on a walk with her, which he agrees to. As they leave the shop, Riley's iPhone lies in a trash can. After a few flickers on the screen, it suddenly powers on...


No comments:

Post a Comment