David Bradley, stars as the roguish soldier Anthony Rand, who follows a ruthless general back through time in a last ditch attempt to save the universe.
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Reviews
The Worst Film Ever
Such a frustrating disappointment
Don't listen to the negative reviews
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Total Reality is not entirely bad. The idea was intriguing, the opening sequence was great, Missa Koprova is beautiful and appealing and David Bradley is a commanding physical actor and his acting is reasonable. Apart from these Total Reality is pretty poor and doesn't have things to recommend beyond what was mentioned above. The special effects do look as though they were rushed through, the way the film is shot is choppy and the setting suffers from a lack of authenticity and too many scenes where it is over-lit. The score is generic and overbearing, while the dialogue is cheesy and repetitive and the story obvious- to the point of guessing what's going to happen next and being correct every time- and mind-numbingly dull. The action shows Bradley trying very hard with what he has(the movie shows little of his physical acting) but one is always wishing that he had more inspired and lively choreography to work with. The characters and their situations are one cliché after another with nothing done to make them particularly memorable or interesting, while the direction is pedestrian and the rest of the acting shows the actors unable(or is it not willing?) to do anything with the writing or characters. In conclusion, there is far worse out there but Total Reality on the whole was pretty poor with a few redeeming merits. 4/10 Bethany Cox
David Bradley stars as Lt. Rand, a future soldier facing a death sentence is given a chance for freedom if he leads a group of commandos back to 1998 to prevent a group of rebel fighters from preventing the totalitarian government from ever happening. Bradley also has 40 hours to succeed or his device in his neck will explode, along the way Bradley questions his mission. David Bradley I always thought of as an awful actor, his works in American Ninja 3 and American Ninja 4 made Michael Dudikoff seem like a Shakespearan actor. However in one of his last films before his retirement (?) from films, he delivered one of his best performance to date in what is one of his very best. The movie's main flaw is simply that it tries to do too much, in that things are implied so much we often don't understand where the plot is coming from. The main story is handled fairly well but the subplots are often dropped or just barely skimmed over. Total Reality really does imply a lot more than it tells and it has some scenes off quiet effectiveness. The movie doesn't start off all that well, as it starts out just to run down time but in reality it's what sets up the motivation of Bradley's character and the movie despite ripping off Escape From New York, The Terminator, The Dirty Dozen and even Trancers the film still combines the elements well enough and comes up with its share of good ideas to make it work for Science Fiction fans. There are of course plot holes but what I found quite captivating about Total Reality, is how David Bradley's character questions his mission and indeed isn't all that inspired in his quest to save his government. In fact when he explains "When we die, they'll send someone to replace us." which gets a sad reply, Bradley's quip "Don't look at me, I just work here" is well handled. Indeed it's bizarre but it's David Bradley that makes the movie work the way it does. With someone like Olivier Gruner, the movie wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. It's somewhat sad Bradley went into obscurity because he really became not too shabby of an actor, at least on the basis of this performance. The ending is also unexpected and intriguing which earns the movie it's high marks and in the end Phillip J. Roth crafts his best work to date, which is no doubt due to David Bradley. Something I never ever thought i'd ever write ever.* *1/2 out of 4-(Pretty Good)
There is no reason to watch this film.Why? Many reasons. First up, the acting is awful. There is hardly a line that isn't misread - but that is hardly surprising given the banality, stupidity, and repetitiveness of the dialogue the actors are asked to mouth. It is awfully written. One of the most annoying things about the script is that the writers only seem to know one way of keeping their characters talking after a certain point and that is to have them repeat the most important words of the previous character's line."Repeat?" "Yes, they repeat it. For the whole movie." "The whole movie?" "Yes, the whole movie." Etc. In movies like this you generally know who the bad guys are and what they are after. (All the good guys usually have to do is stop the bad guys. Setting up a good "Mwahahaha! with X in my grasp I will rule the Universe!" villain is the first stop in any cheapo SF plot) but in this turkey? - you tell me.As I understand it our "heros" are a bunch of mass murderers sent into the past on a Dirty Dozen type mission. They are sent by a fascistic totalitarian state to stop some other mass murderers from altering the course of history. The new history would not include the rise of totalitarianism, and a war that kills 30 billion people and leaves the Earth a dead planet (we know all this because this movie has one of those handy long on-screen situation reports just before the action starts, telling you who is who and what is what. It's an indication of who the producers think their target audience will be, that it is narrated as well as appearing on screen - just to save the audience from taxing their brains too much by doing a lot of reading.) So just who are we supposed to be rooting for here? I guess we are asked to believe our hero undertakes some sort of journey from totalitarianism to love, peace, and understanding while shooting loads of people - but that doesn't work as an arc because we are shown he is a decent(ish) human being right at the start when he tries to rescue all the civilians aboard the rebel station.I guess the makers were aiming at some sort of deeper than normal complexity in this film but they just ended up with an unholy mess with more plot holes and logical inconsistencies than a dozen or so of your average crap SF movies.The opening credits were nice.
don't buy this film for comedy value like I did, I didnt find it one bit funny, but so f****** miserable and lame it's unbelievable. I gave it to a friend for christmas which was pretty funny (on my side) I recently heard that he watched it and told me what an a**ehole I am!There is nothing more frustrating than watching an over-lit, over dramatic, poorly scored scene in which the camera is sat there on a tripod and doesn't move... the film work is truely pathetic, and I can only say DONT WATCH THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!