Brian (Frank Whaley) is a lone scientist working on short term time travel back 20 minutes in a government super collider in Texas. Frank (James Belushi) is a petty criminal looking to sell stolen advanced computer chips. He's a loudmouth angry husband to Rayanne (Shannon Whirry). They pick up hitchhiker Karen (Kylie Travis). Frank kills Rayanne thinking she cheated on him. Karen escapes to the lab where she is accidentally sent back in time. Only things go much worst and she has to do it again.The story is way too convenient. It's action galore but it feels very manufactured. Part of that is the crazy cartoon character that Belushi is playing. If he could dial back the crazy, his character could actually be more intense. The idea is interesting but the execution is too wild.

Why are a lot of people comparing sci-fi movies to the known boundaries of science? There is fiction and there is non-fiction.. but there is also science-fiction, which is also non fiction. There is always a counterintuitive element in these movies and when you are nitpicking it its like unweaving a rainbow for no apparent reason, comparing apples and oranges etc. Just because a movie lacks a waterproof logical basis does not mean it can't be a great (B) movie. The sheer fact that time traveling on macro human-level can't be done according to what we know today would also dismiss great movies like Back to the Future, Terminator series, etc. If you want reality: do not watch movies, for they are at best based upon it. That off my chest, I can safely say I enjoyed this movie quite a bit through empirical proof. To me it is not even about the time traveling situation, its merely the cinematography of the desert, the americana of it all.

Beautiful Kylie Travis ('Models Inc.') plays Karen, a hostage negotiator with tragedy in her recent past. Having quit the force, she's traveling through rural Texas when she has car trouble and is then picked up by jovial sleaze bag Frank (James Belushi). When Frank realizes that his wife Rayanne (erotic film star Shannon Whirry) has been unfaithful, he murders her in cold blood. While Karen runs from Frank, she comes across an isolated government complex where lonely young scientist Brian (Frank Whaley) has been conducting time travel experiments. Karen then realizes that here is a situation where she can go back in time and do things over...so she does. The only problem is, she actually makes things WORSE. So she ends up back at the complex, and goes back in time again. And so it goes while she stubbornly tries, each time, to make better decisions.Yeah...this does indeed sound like a serious sci-fi version of "Groundhog Day", much like an an earlier TV movie titled '12:01', starring Jonathan Silverman. But the premise is amusing, and director Louis Morneau actually does a very creditable job at keeping things very taut and compelling. The movie has a breakneck pace to it, a respectable intensity level, and characters about whom we can actually give a damn. Travis is quite good in the central role, while Belushi relishes the opportunity to go over the top in his portrayal of a hair-trigger tempered piece of scum. Whaley is very likable as the scientist, and Whirry earns our sympathies as the timid wife. It's also nice, as it always is, to see M. Emmet Walsh, as he plays cheerful gas station proprietor Sam. Jesse Borrego ("Con Air"), Sherman Howard ("Day of the Dead" '85), and Guy Boyd ("Body Double") co-star."Retroactive" is slickly photographed in Clairmont-Scope by George Mooradian, and has an appropriate sun baked look to it in all outdoor scenes. Special effects are decent and not overdone. I don't know if the script (credited to Michael Hamilton-Wright, Robert Strauss, and Phillip Badger) will bear any close scrutiny, but at least while this thrill ride is still going on, the viewer may not mind too much. It does give in to some clichés (such as characters missing their targets all too often when they shoot, or guns that take forever to run out of ammo), but the action is first-rate, and our protagonist and antagonist do set off some big sparks.Seven out of 10.

I just can't get over how awful this movie is. Something that makes a good movie is good acting and good acting requires a good script and good writing and this movie has NONE OF ANY OF IT.This thing is so full of plot holes you could turn a diesel truck around in them. They take every HORRIBLE cliché you can imagine and make them worse. One of my favorite ones? She knocks Frank (Belushi) down and instead of picking up her gun and killing him (He's just murdered several people), she runs and she's A POLICE OFFICER? This is writing at it's absolute WORST!Just plain bad.I'd love to go into a lot of detail, but this movie is so god awful it really isn't worth to much effort. It reminds me of the A-Team. One million bullets spent but the bad guy never gets hit. The woman knows it's going to happen yet REFUSES to shoot Frank when she can. EVERY SINGLE TIME.Belushi's bad guy is so over the top horribly acted that it makes you want to pull a Stewie and go track him down just so you can knock him on his butt. AND besides, how is it that EVERY SINGLE TIME FRANK hits what he aims at, but NO ONE ELSE DOES?It reminds me of how awful The Butterfly Effect was with the same sort of time travel idea but everything that can go wrong does so and stupidly so.And at what point in time are we going to stop showing cars blowing up like this? They DON'T!Besides, don't buy into any of the professional writers on here talking this movie up. They've sold their souls for a few bucks to push up a product that is by any standards garbage.