★ 4 / 10
Back to the Futile
NoDakTatum
A trio of time travelers land in the present and try to find out who they are, why they are here, and why is the host of "Reading Rainbow" after them? Paul…
A trio of time travelers land in the present and try to find out who they are, why they are here, and why is the host of "Reading Rainbow" after them? Paul (Daniel Baldwin), Jessica (Stacey Haiduk), and Carter (T. K. Carter) all land with skull caps that make Harvey Korman's fake chrome dome on "The Carol Burnett Show" look chillingly realistic. They eventually take manual labor jobs, and keep their special powers a secret. Paul is telekinetic, Jessica is psychic, and Carter can make fire without the use of flammable liquids. Paul is rescued from baddies by Aaron (Richard Herd), who runs an organization that helps children born with these powers. Aaron is aided by a psychic boy Roland (David Netter), who communicates telepathically. Paul rescues Jessica, and hints at a past future that neither one especially remembers. They also rescue Carter, and go on the run. LeVar Burton is Winstrom, who is very psychic. He also has some mean henchmen (Tom Poster, Trevor Goddard), and a mysterious boss Holden (Malcolm McDowell). They chase our heroic trio, and the heroic trio runs and hides, using their powers when needed, until the true reason they were sent back in time is discovered.
"Yesterday's Target" is yesterday's news. The film is too small to live up to its hopeful intentions. For a huge underground organization, Aaron seems to be running a very small psychiatric hospital with a handful of patients. The action scenes lumber along on their average special effects and small budget. The film tries to be a road movie, but it never gets far enough down that road. A switch to time travel thriller never works, as the climactic mission that the three are sent on is really not all that exciting. The semi-name cast is pretty good. Baldwin is an old hand at these B action movies, but Burton has been such a goody-goody staple on children's television, he can gather no menace to play the part of Winstrom, despite the despicable murders and whatnot. McDowell turns in his usual psycho performance, proving he will appear in anything for a buck. While Samson's direction is adequate, I got the feeling he was confined by his cable TV movie budget. A big screen action blowout run by Cronenberg or John Carpenter probably would have had the desired effect. There may have been more to Bourla's script, the film is a choppy eighty minutes long. "Yesterday's Target" seems half done, and never grabs the viewer like it should. It combines "X-Men," "The X Files," and "The Terminator," but seems satisfied to end on time and nothing more.
★ 2 / 10
It's as if Terminator and X-men had an unholy baby!
Aaron1375
This film was obviously doing an X-men thing without having to buy the rights to the famous superhero team. They just threw the time traveling stuff as a…
This film was obviously doing an X-men thing without having to buy the rights to the famous superhero team. They just threw the time traveling stuff as a bonus. What we get could have worked, but they apparently did not work with the script much as it sort of never really goes anywhere or explains anything. Maybe this thing was supposed to be a pilot for a television show, but it literally tells the viewers as little as possible on its way to its tepid conclusion.
The story, we see some stuff and then a man and a woman walking about and not looking too good. Three years later, Urkel named Roland here draws bad pictures that another man somehow is able to figure out who they are. He contacts a man who exhibits telekinetic powers. Then he finds a woman with the ability to see ever so briefly into the future and then a guy with pyro-kinetic powers. And thus the Y-men are born to combat all those who would deny the next step in human evolution, or something, it really makes no sense as there are two organizations and by the end of the movie I still didn't know what either ones purpose was...
We get a pretty strange cast as Levar Burton is the bad guy, doesn't really work. Malcolm McDowell as a sort of bad guy and Daniel Baldwin as a rather unlikable hero...well that is not fair, not too many likable characters in this film at all and that is probably more due to the crummy script which seemed like they wanted to do something cool, but could not figure how to bring it all home.
So, totally not a good movie as it seems like it wanted to be more, but failed to do so. Not sure if they planned for this to be a series as so many things are left vague, but then again the film ends with everything sort of being done. I just think they were trying to do an X-men film as they have so many elements one finds in their comics, but they were doing it on the cheap.
3.8/10
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