Review of Retrograde (2004) by Van R — 03 Nov 2010

Combine "The Terminator" with its travel back in time premise to save the future and "Die Hard" about one many against many gunmen, and you have the basics for Christopher Kulikowski's unconvincing but tolerable sci-fi saga "Retrograde" with Dolph Lundgren battling to save Earth from a global biological disaster with some maniac zombies thrown into the mix.

There is nothing wrong with the plot, but Kulikowski has to work on such a threadbare budget that the film fails to grab you where it counts. The story opens in deep space as a planet incinerates itself and vanishes in a incandescent explosion that hurls chunks of it across the universe.

Some of those meteors penetrate the atmosphere and crash at the bottom of the Earth. John Foster (Dolph Lundgren) and a space ship full of heavily armed and genetically enhanced soldiers, including Dalton (a balded Joe Montana) are dispatched from the year 2204 and are sent back 200 years to Antarctic where a ship, the Nathaniel Palmer--is trapped in the ice.

The poor humans see a meteor land in the frozen wastelands and tromp out unwisely to collect samples, little realizing the tragic mistake that they are making. Talking about tragic mistakes, Renee (Silvia De Santis of "Artemisia") leaves her toddler to take off on this historic voyage.

Later, as she lies dying in the snow, with their ship sinking, she knows that she made a mistake. Of course, heroic Dolph saves the day, not once but twice! Gary Daniels co-stars but is wasted. The close-quarters combat fights register as lackluster.

Presumably, they didn't have a stunt coordinator or they wanted to make double sure than nobody got hurt. Nevertheless, the thesping is quite good and the crew of the ship look like they actually know each other.

Overall, "Retrograde" is an imaginative but shoddy movie because the budget doesn't make its science fiction believable. The settings are okay, but the special effects are less than special.