2:22 - Encontro Marcado

Soapy cheese fest that don't cohere. Could well have been the script of an 80s music videoclip. Despite the decent enough production value, it can in fact be described as 90 odd minutes of two nice-looking people who fall in love trying (in vain, as far as sound story-telling goes) to find cosmic significance in their feelings. They do so through a mary-go-round story that uses all the trappings of the "stuck in a moment in time" motif without any of the logical puzzles, metaphysical ponderings, or even plain suspense that a situation like that may create. Love proper may reverberate down the ages, but this love affair's photons get trapped in the movie's scripting black hole and never make it out. Utterly forgettable.

5 points to production value but nothing more than this.

The star of this film are the screenwriters; Nathan and Stein, who take an incomplete idea and run with it. Unfortunately, when you rush, you sometimes make mistakes. This is one of those times. It is a real shame, and I am sure both writers will have a productive future. But this effort falls short due to the inability of the writers to clearly convey what they are writing about. The character of the air traffic controller is well-developed, but not anyone else. To get an effective chemistry for the audience, one must develop the TWO characters at the same time; not just one and then introduce another one much later. That device does not work, and helps to eventually ruin any connection the audience might have with the later character. This flaw is not the only reason the film is not successful. The premise of time travel (and this is a time travel film in the sense that Groundhog Day was a time travel film) is a difficult premise to work around as a film. Groundhog Day was successful because it had a great actor, Murray, and great comedy situations. This film has no sense of humor, nor does it have any sense of impending repeating events. The audience is intrigued, but then loses interest when there are no compelling examples before the final event of the phenomenon. A good try, but no cigar.

An American sci-fi drama; A story about an air traffic controller who is suspended from his job after a near miss incident, who starts to notice a reoccurence of the conditions that led to his suspension. Drawn into a complex relationship, he must figure out a way to control time itself. Pattern, repetition and predestination often feature in sci-fi fantasy movie plots, but when complicated ideas are ill-explained, it makes for difficult viewing for the circumspect viewer, even one prepared to suspend belief. The lead character is a poseur, a man of metropolitan cliché, rushing about carelessly - this runs in stark contrast to the traits one associates with an air traffic controller. The love story also feels unnatural. The stylisation of the film feels misplaced too with voiceovers that reduce the illusion further.

In NYC, air traffic controller Dylan Branson (Michiel Huisman) has a premonition of a shooting in Grand Central Station at 2:22pm. He goes to work and nearly crashes two planes into each other at 2:22pm. He continues to encounter strange occurrences at 2:22pm. He meets art gallery owner Sarah Barton (Teresa Palmer).

There is a good idea somewhere here and these actors could have made it work. I'm still not sure if this premise makes any kind of movie sense. It would probably make more sense without the complication of the past loop. It could be more compelling. I really like the beautiful looking couple although they could have some better writing. The movie just needs to clear up the rambling premise.

I have to admit I don't understand the extreme negativity in some of the reviews.....especially considering the amount of uninspired garbage in movie theaters these days.

Now, 2:22 is not a masterpiece, and like most movies it has weaknesses, but its strength is that it builds a sense of suspense without the usual car chases and urban shoot outs that seem to please the ADD crowds so much. The acting is solid (not Oscar material but better than hinted at in many reviews), the direction and special effects are very polished, and, more importantly, the slow accretion of mysterious details and surreal circumstances make it far more interesting, IMO, than most movies currently on offering. I think this movie also does a good job, overall, of hinting at parts of the ending but at the same time maintaining a sense of suspense about how exactly the mysterious events and patterns noticed by the main character will come together.

This is not a realistic thriller, with a clear cut plot and an ending that explains every minor thread or detail in its story, or a relentless action movies with plenty of explosions and other events that ultimately mean nothing, or a bloated love story with SF elements. Hence, I think, the disappointment of some viewers.

The way I see it this is a movie that, despite its imperfections, evolves into a subtle, psychological thriller that hints at man's endless fascination with patterns (in our Universe, in our life, in history etc) and at our sense of wonder of how we fit in it. A movie that while providing us with an interesting story also asks us to add to the plot our own interpretation of the events, and our own sense of wonder about the mystery of our existence.

Now, there is no doubt that other movies on similar topics are superior (12 monkeys and Groundhog day come to mind, among others), but I still think this is one of the few movies worth watching I've seen this year, despite its limitations. At least it asks the watcher to actually engage his brain instead of just switching off and let the explosions roll on until the cardboard cutout bad guy/guys are vanquished.