Time Runner (1993)

A man from the future tries to prevent an alien invasion.
Starring: Mark Hamill, Rae Dawn Chong, Gordon Tipple, and Brion James

Link to IMDB

Raynor, time tripping

In the year 2022 aliens have begun attacking Earth, and the scientists and military are fighting back with everything they've got. One soldier, Michael Raynor, escapes a space battle in his ship but is sucked into a wormhole and transported back in time to 1992! (The same year the movie was made! Coincidence!?) The government finds his crashed ship and Dr. Karen Donaldson does some science on it with Pink Floyd lasers, but she's told by her angry superior, Freeman, that she better forget all about this UFO.
Meanwhile, Raynor wakes up in a nearby barn, confused about where and when he is. (Don't you just hate when that happens?) He's shocked to discover he has traveled back 30 years, and is also having visions of the near future as a side effect of the wormhole.
Freeman wants to capture Raynor but Dr. Karen offers to help him escape, and thus begins a chase across the country. Raynor realizes his visions are of a possible future, and that his actions can change what will happen.


Things are still going to hell in 2022, and it seems like Earth President Neila is working with the aliens! A lot of people yell at each other in the future, so we have that to look forward to. Back in '92, Raynor is having his own alien troubles when he realizes Karen is one of them! She claims to know nothing about a planned invasion and is just a friendly scientist. Karen seems honest, so Raynor chooses to trust her, and she can help him avoid Freeman as they follow Raynor's wormhole visions for answers.

"I don't know nothing about any worm whatevers." - Old farmer

Karen

Freeman

The movie is pretty clumsy, so you just have to turn off your brain and coast on autopilot. There are gunfights and chases to distract you from the plot holes, and the characters are likable enough, but Hamill looks and sounds very disinterested the whole time.

Neila

Eventually, Raynor's plan is to contact Neila in 1992, hoping that the aliens haven't influenced him yet and he can alter future events by making sure the alien war never starts. In another vision Raynor realizes that today is literally his birthday, and Freeman plans to kill his mother before she can give birth!
There are interesting twists as loyalties are betrayed and unlikely friends are found, but will Raynor be able to save his future by saving his past in the present? Or wait... Is it save the present by preventing the future in the past?? Oh fuck, I don't know!
It's a typical, no budget, quasi-Terminator ripoff, but a lot of it just struggled to make sense.



Be sure not to miss:
- Laserdisc as mobile storage? Come on, that wasn't logical even in 1992.
- Freeman looks like Randy Quaid and Sting from Dune mixed together...

Internet review:
"I kept watching thinking it has to get better than this, but that didn't happen." - Geenoh

Should I watch it?
Worth seeing if you're truly bored, but set your expectations low.

Where can I find it?
The vidzi link here.

Time Runner gets...