TIME LAPSE is a cheesy straight-to-video thriller of 2001. It suffers from featuring an exceptionally wooden young actor, William McNamara, as the lead. He plays a guy who has been administered with a drug that will destroy his memory within a few days if he doesn't find the antidote in the meantime. Very much a reworking of the classic D.O.A., then. Sadly, this is an incompetent little production, failing to deliver on the script or direction, and the action scenes that do take place are staged in such a way that they're quite laughable, such as the massive explosions that leave our hero remarkably unscathed. Dina Meyer shows up as the female lead and Roy Scheider has a small, cliched role, but they're both wasting their time here.

This is not only a bad movie, it is yet another scary symptom of a sick society being pandered to by an exploitive and irresponsible film industry. The plot is idiotic. As happens again and again, it is based on corrupt, all powerful government. There is endless gun play (in which nobody ever seems to hit anything)and repeated gore. There is a totally gratuitous lesbian sex scene which has absolutely no bearing on the plot. If things aren't being riddled with bullets or pushed out of windows, they're blown up in fiery explosions. Why are the Brits able to do some real nail-biters without resorting to this sort of blam-blam sensationalism. And the Americans wonder why they have a firearms problem... I am a great believer that you get what you pay for in bargain bin movies at Walmart. But I keep hoping. I paid a buck fifty for this one and would consider myself ripped off except that by replacing the erase tab, I can re-use the tape. Almost anything I record on it will be better than this vulgar, violent cinematic vomit!

I didn't notice the use of footage from Renny Harlin's movie, but I did notice the use of footage from "Narrow Margin", specifically the shootout at the cabin in the woods. The guy in the helicopter is wearing a beige suit and cowboy boots. I could swear that I have also seen another movie that used this footage as well. The movie is extremely low budget and shows it. The acting and directing are all fairly unremarkable which is strange considering the talented cast. Perhaps this just points up the importance of a good script. No matter how talented the actor or the director is the story and dialog are uninteresting, so is the movie.

The story line might be interesting. But the acting is pretty awful. Not worth the renting money. It's surprising to see Roy Sheider in such an average movie. He's probably the only reason people would rent this movie. This movie is below average, I rated it 4 out of 10.