RETROACTIVE

STARRING: James Belushi, Kylie Travis, Shannon Whirry, Frank Whaley, M. Emmet Walsh

1997, 91 Minutes, Directed by: Louis Morneau

Ever fantasized about how you would change certain things that happened to you if you could somehow travel back in time? Of course you have. Think how cool it would be to have a time travel machine that will allow you to go back in time and simply fix things that went wrong . . .

Retroactive toys around with the same principle, but also asks the question: what if you could do that, but you somehow made things just turn out worse than it already was to begin with?

That's the scenario Retroactive's lead character played by Kylie Travis (who does a passable Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 impersonation) finds herself in when she is stranded by the side of the road in the Texan desert and hitches a lift with a violent and erratic James Belushi.

In a clever variation on the Groundhog Day theme she has to relive the same events over and over again until she gets it right. But she doesn't - things just keep on getting worse every time around.

Unlike most of the crud that goes straight to video (see my reviews of Within The Rock and It Came From Outer Space II as examples), Retroactive comes as a surprise. Sure, it remains standard action movie fare, but is one of the better examples of the genre.

Well worth a rental for an evening's undemanding viewing. (It'd make a swell double bill along with The Hidden - another unexpected video gem.)

Sci-Fi Movie Page Pick: Not bad. If you're looking for undemanding action movie stuff then you can do a whole lot worse than this engaging Groundhog Day-style time travel story.