LAST LIVES
USA. 1996. Director - Worth Keeter, Screenplay - Dan Duling, Producer - Steve Beswick, Photography - Kent Wakeford, Music - Greg Edmonson, Visual Effects Supervisor - Jaison Stritch, Special Effects Supervisor - Greg Hull, Production Design - C. Daniel Hall & David Rawlins. Production Company - Promark Entertainment Group/Videal Gmbh/C.E.G. Productions. C. Thomas Howell (Aaron), Jennifer Rubin (Adrienne), Billy Wirth (Malakai), Judge Reinhold (Merkhan), David Lenthall (Benza), Robert Pente (Khafar), J.C. Quinn (Lieutenant Denny Parks), Richard Fullerton (Roma)
Plot: The scientist Merkhan perfects a device which can allow travel between parallel worlds and chooses as his test subject the convicted murderer Malakai because of Malakai's singular fixation with finding his dead wife. Malakai successfully crosses over and momentarily visits the bedroom of Adrienne, this world's counterpart of his wife. But shortly before his scheduled execution Malakai escapes, crosses over and abducts Adrienne from the midst of her wedding ceremony to Aaron. Merkhan follows but is fatally wounded in a shootout. Before he dies he gives Aaron several armbands that can revive the wearer from the dead that allow Aaron to defy death in his pursuit of the ruthless Malakai.
This sf-action hybrid is a fairly silly effort. Its plot setup is a blatant steal from `Twelve Monkeys' which was released only the year before this was made - in both films a criminal is chosen as a pioneer in a temporal experiment because of their fixation on a particular woman who they in due course end up abducting. Needless to say `Last Lives' does it with considerably less imagination than the excellent `Twelve Monkeys' did. As an action film it is competent enough with some reasonably exciting car chase sequences. However as a science-fiction film it is really quite silly. It is hamstrung by the daft gimmick of having the hero armed with a collection of bracelets that can revive him from the dead and as a result is filled with a series of quite contrivedly absurd sequences which have hero Howell being shot in the head, thrown from balconies, crisped in car crashes, and at the climax dealing with the villain's goons variously by grabbing electric fences as they catch him and blowing himself and they up in a shed filled with explosives. As the scientist Judge Reinhold seems awkward and embarrassed. Jennifer Rubin, in an badly unbecoming haircut, looks drab and neurotic, delivering a performance that would appear to be under the influence of major tranquillisers. The incredibly handsome Billy Wirth cuts what at first seems an interestingly romantic villain, although this is unfulfilled, and he spends the rest of the time mooning over Rubin in a series of telepathic romantic longeurs that do seem to go on forever.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
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