We join the story eight months after Sophie’s husband Mal has been killed in a drink-drive incident. She and their daughter are struggling to get along together without him, their lives full of grief and difficulties. Before he died, Mal had a good friend Jabir, and because they were a pair of boffin-nerds interested in physics and science, had a plan to build a time machine!
This was no ordinary time machine though - rather than transporting people into the past or future, it became able to send a packet of energy to a specific location at a specific time, to kind-of explode! Don't ask me to explain any more about the science! Jabir, seeing the state that Sophie was in and her crumbling relationship with her and Mal’s daughter, Riley, continues to work on the machine without Mal being around.
When Jabir finally thinks that he has something of a working theoretical model, he talks to Sophie about it and explores the possibility of sending back a packet of energy to eliminate the drunk-driver before he mows down Mal. She laughs it off initially, but as he says to her in the end - what has she got to lose! She visits the house of the drunk-driver and sees that he’s a nasty man who is abusive towards his family and still a drunk. In the end, she agrees, on the basis that the world (and his family) can do without such a bad person, replacing it with a good one - she getting Mal back and to restore her family.
I’ll stop with the plot there as anything else would be a giveaway. Needless to say, not everything is quite as it seems. Consequences of changing the past, even tiny bits of it - like removing one person - have far-reaching effects which had not been thought through or realised. Scientific experimentation - testing the theories by just getting on and trying it out!
There’s much fallout following the event, which is certainly thought-provoking and interesting to follow through with the very good cast. The three main players, Judy Greer (The Village), Edi Gathegi (For All Mankind) and Payman Maadi (A Separation) do an excellent and convincing job, turning on the drama, emotion and anxiety when called upon to do so in this evolving and ultimately complex plotline. For some (like me) it might be a case of keeping up at the back! It’s an enjoyable sci-fi romp and well worth a look, now streaming on limited platforms.
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