When an apartment building goes up in flames, bystander Eddy Kay (Michael Biehn, The Abyss) runs inside to save a woman and her baby. There’s only one problem: Eddy Kay is thought to be dead!
Okay, there’s a second problem: Shadowy agents keep trying to kill Eddy. If he’s not being hit by a van, he’s attacked in his sleep by a knife-wielding intruder. (Two of his would-be assassins are played by The Last Boy Scout’s Billy Blanks and pro boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, which would absolutely intimidate me; a third is played by Watchers II’s leggy, never-more-scorching Tracy Scoggins, which would absolutely arouse me and put my guard down.)
But why aim to eradicate a simple watch repairman? Heck, Eddy’s practically a kid since he rides his bike everywhere, collects jigsaw puzzles, eats PB&J for lunch and showers with garden shears — children still do that, right? When Eddy starts having weird visions in which he utters “I don’t have eggs, only sausages” in Hungarian, psychoanalyst Dr. Anna Nolmar (Patsy Kensit, Lethal Weapon 2) wonders if he’s having memory problems. Eddy disagrees:
“I’ve got a really good memory. I’ve always prided myself on that. I can remember, like, the smallest details of my childhood and my friends, their names. I used to have a friend named Kevin Richards. We used to call him Kevvy. We used to get into trouble together, play sports.”
Well, in that case …
Don’t judge Timebomb by that rudimentary dialogue. Created at the height of Hollywood’s home-video premieres by Israeli writer/director Avi Nesher (Tales from the Crypt Presents: Ritual), the sci-fi conspiracy thriller is honestly four-fifths stellar, exhibiting a heavy, heady streak of Philip K. Dick-level paranoia. In fact, it’s embedded with enough shared elements to resemble Total Recall, but on a remembered-for-wholesale budget (hence the studio backlot’s less-than-towering inferno).
Luckily, Nesher isn’t parsimonious with the slam-bang. The movie’s imaginative set pieces are well-executed, from a 3 a.m. assault on a mental institution to a daylight shootout in an L.A. porno theater. That the latter occurs while porn star Victoria Paris (Miracle on 69th Street) feigns pleasure from the big screen has to be a joke on Nesher’s part.
I know for sure it is when Eddy and Dr. Anna, on the run and en route to Mexico, stop for cash at an ATM and the supposedly intelligent doc waits for a receipt. “Fuck the receipt!” Eddy yells. —Rod Lott