Timeline, starring the late Paul Walker and Gerard Butler, and featuring a large and talented supporting cast, is an underrated film based on a very underrated book by sci-thriller master, the late Michael Crichton.
This was always going to be a tricky film to make because the book's story is based on the sci-fi premise of time travel. The film preserves most of Crichton's brilliant plot--a tech firm in the American desert is trying to invent teleportation but stumbles into a wormhole that only sends the transported back in time to the year 1375 and a village in France during the brutal 100 Years' War.
The actors making up the principle groups of story characters, the oily and secretive tech guys, the erstwhile archaeology students who get caught up in the tech guys' invention, and the, of course, late medieval English and French combatants the first two groups both travel back in time to encounter, are well-cast and well--directed by Richard Donner. Particular supporting role standouts here are Marton Csokas as Decker, David Thewlis as Doniger and Michael Sheen as 'Lord Oliver.' Anna Friel is perfectly medieval and ladylike yet attractively modern as Lady Clare, and Neal McDonough and Matt Craven post terrific performances as the wayward tech firm's henchmen.
What gets left out from the book, what really has to get left out unless Donner et al were to pull a Peter Jackson and stretch Timeline into three films, is the trove of rich, textured, historical detail about virtually every aspect of the little French village and castle combination that the story circles around. The book is, indeed, better than the film, simply because Crichton's historical fiction writing work on all things 'Aquitainian' in Timeline equals or exceeds anything Bernard Cornwell or Tom Clancy have ever put out in terms of nourishing minutiae. But you can't competently get all that in inside a 2 hour film.
With the exception of a few scenes where a character here and there is "run through" with a broadsword, Timeline is almost a family- friendly film, something that young people and the mature crowd can enjoy together. Almost, parents, screen it first.
Most Crichton fans have never heard of or read Timeline, and most Richard Donner, Paul Walker, and Gerard Butler fans have never seen this very solid little 2003 film. Hopefully those oversights are rectified as time moves forward, because Timeline is an underrated film based on a very underrated book, and that means it deserves an audience.
