AllMovie

There is an intriguing, potentially beautiful idea at the core of this 1989 sci-fi opus from cult director Michael Anderson (Logan's Run) - heroes from the future rescuing the doomed passengers on airline crashes at exactly the right moment, and narrowly evading paradox each time. But to work effectively, the picture needs to conjure up a sense of eerie, apocalyptic mystery. The best way to do that probably would have been to stick with the perspectives of the present-day investigators (played with appropriate gravitas by vets Kris Kristofferson and Daniel J. Travanti) and gradually reveal to them and us the whole staggering truth, as we all begin to latch on to the implications of what is transpiring. That's pretty much the approach we get for the first 20 minutes so, but once Cheryl Ladd enters the picture (miscast, as a rescuer with a silly hairstyle who falls for Kristofferson) - and the movie leaps forward 1000 years in the future, into her time frame - the saga grows so campy that it is sure to elicit giggles from most viewers; it has one character who looks cribbed from Zur in The Last Starfighter and another (Robert Joy) who resembles a poor man's version of C3P0. The kitschiness pretty much destroys the movie's promise. Nor do the vast holes in the narrative fabric help its case. Kristofferson and Travanti do their best, but can't save this picture from being a colossal turkey. The final sequence ("...This is not the beginning of the end... but the end of the beginning...") is a howler.