Loosely based on Ray Bardbury's classic short story (The film keeps the main character's first name, the name of the company, the last name of one of the clients, the year the film is set in, and the "Butterfly Effect" plot), A Sound of Thunder takes place in the future (2055 to be exact), where time travel tech has been invented. A luxury safari corporation has utilized the tech to take clients on hunting expeditions in pre-historic/Dinosaur times. When one of the clients fails to follow company protocols, the past is inadvertently altered, leading to drastic, horrific changes in the future. It's up to expedition leader Travis Ryer (Edward Burns), disgruntled scientist Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), and weapons specialist Marcus Payne (David Oyelowo) to find out what went wrong in the past and find a way to fix things if the future is to be salvaged.
It's about on the level of an Asylum film or an original Sci-Fi/Syfy TV movie. That means A Sound of Thunder is very, very bad...but in a pretty entertaining way. A Sound of Thunder was directed and shot by Peter Hyams (Who previously directed Timecop, The Relic, The Muskateer, and End of Days), and was written by Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Gregory Poirier. Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer co-wrote Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, Sahara, and the 2011 version of Conan The Barbarian together. Gregory Poirier wrote See Spot Run and The Spy Next Door. Knowing this, is it any wonder the screenplay for A Sound of Thunder is so poor?
There isn't really much to praise in terms of cast. Edward Burns has been in some good films, but he isn't anything special here. He's our hero, but he isn't noteworthy nor does he do anything to really stand out. David Oyelowo has shown he is a fantastic actor, and he seems to be having fun here. He gets a laughably bad death. Ben Kingsley appears throughout as Charles Hatton, the CEO of Time Safari, but is given next to nothing to do (He pops up on occasion during the first two acts, and is thoughtlessly discarded of somewhere in the 3rd act). His character is given some development when it's heavily implied that the Govt. is involved with Time Safari in some way (though this revelation is never built upon or explained). Kingsley seems to know what kind of film he's in, and he's certainly one of the very few bright spots here.
Around an hour into the run time, A Sound of Thunder makes the decision to forego the plot of the Ray Bradbury story and go full creature feature instead. Not the worst decision. Following a bunch of wildly evolved creatures as they attack our group could be fun (and I like the idea of monkey/dinosaur hybrids). Unfortunately, extremely sub-par CGI and effects work detract from any real enjoyment that could be had. The creatures seen throughout look bottom-of-the-barrel and the choice to use a terrible blue-screen for every scene walking through the city is distracting and awful.
The design of the city is weak as well. It's very hard to get a feel for how the city is laid out, and remembering what each building is or what they house ends up being much more difficult than it should be. The whole production looks unappealing in design and aesthetics as well. In the end, A Sound of Thunder is a poorly made, bad, B movie monster flick. It's entertaining, but only in a bad movie kind of way.
1 STAR
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