Last Lives (1997)

Story Synopsis: In a dimension parallel to ours, the convicted terrorist Malakai is being used as a guinea pig in a temporal experiment designed to send people across parallel worlds. Convinced that his dead wife exists in our world, he hijacks the experiment, sending himself & two cohorts over to our world. The scientist who created the experiment also crosses over, armed with a number of bracelets that can revive the wearer in the event of death. He uses one of these 'lifebands' to resurrect Aaron, the fiancé of the woman Malakai abducted, having being shot by him as he tried to save her. The pair then gives chase but the scientist is killed in the process. Before he dies, he passes the 'lifebands' to Aaron, who then uses them to attempt a highly risky & dangerous rescue of his love.Film Analysis: Last Lives is a low-budget knockoff of the Terry Gilliam time travel flick 12 MONKEYS (itself a knockoff of a French new wave film known as La Jetee). Both films cover the same story - a criminal is used as a subject in a temporal experiment due to his obsession of a woman from another world or time, the experiment going awry because of this. The only difference is that while 12 Monkeys is an intelligent & darkly humorous time travel flick, Last Lives is a film with a severely limited scope.As an action film, Last Lives is competent enough, with some decent car chases, shootouts & explosions. But it fares less well as a sci-fi film - namely due to the rather stupid gimmick of having the hero armed with special armbands that can help him cheat death. Sure, the gimmick is interesting but the way it is used here is quite silly - as the hero, Thomas C. Howell is killed so many times that it is not even funny. Okay, I take that back - the various ways that Howell kicks the proverbial bucket are so contrived that you will be laughing out loud over it. Case in point being the shack explosion, with Howell's scattered body parts reforming despite the explosion's effects (surely it would've affected the armbands as well?). The temporal experiment is just a MacGuffin used to launch the story, promptly being written out by the end of the first act.The acting is a bit of a mixed bag. Howell is pretty good despite having some sort of Southern accent that affects his performance slightly. Judge Reinhold looks like he is embarrassed to be there while Jennifer Rubin seems to be under the influence of some serious sedatives. As the villain, Billy Wirth (who has proved himself to be a capable actor in the past) is given little to do, making the most of his role as a telepathic terrorist with a pair of silent henchmen & painful telepathy as his only weapon.

A terrorist from an alternate universe whose great love was killed, comes to this world to kidnap her counterpart in this universe. The counterpart is about to get married. The terrorist kills the entire wedding party during the kidnapping. A scientist from the alternate universe tries to stop him. That is the plot of "Last Lives", a low budget sci-fi thriller.Basically, I really enjoyed this flawed film. For the money, the special effects are effective. We are all use to films where the antagonist keeps springing back to life after we think he has been killed. It's a very inventive twist when it is the hero who keeps coming back to life.There is one major flaw with this film. The three leads, Jennifer Rubin ("Screamers"), C. Thomas Howell ("Soul Man"), and Judge Reinhold ("Fast Time At Ridgemont High"), have proved themselves very competent actors. The problem with the entire cast is that you soon realize each of them talk in a very wooden cadence. Since everyone does this, the fault must be that of the director, Worth Keeter. This coupled with some very bad background music detracts from the film.That said, there is enough in the film for me to recommend it. A number of reviewers have savaged it. I feel it's a nice little film well worth a rental from Netflix. Rent it and decide for yourself.

Not much else to say of this science fiction/action wannabe. The story is poor, the acting is poor, and pretty much everything else about this movie is poor. The only intriguing aspect of the movie, the bracelets that can bring you back to life, is wasted in the pathetic plot of the film. Long story short, skip this film. [1/10]

The concept surrounding this movie was/is unbelievable - that a bracelet of sorts could regenerate cells - ultimately bringing a dead person back to life...This is all made possible by time-travel - a prisoner from the future manages to travel back in time with the aid of a scientist (Judge Reinhold)'s machine, looking for who he believes to be his soul-mate of sorts...Unfortunately, Jennifer Rubin (who plays the soul-mate and wife to C. Thomas Howell) and her acting ability, coupled with the poor writing, in areas, really really destroyed the potential for this movie...I have the utmost respect for C. Thomas Howell - I personally think he's one of the best actors around - and it's a shame to see him in a film that really could have been a success...I feel that if a more talented director and more thoughtful screenwriters had entered this project, 'Last Lives' could have been brilliant...[4/10]