VOLITION (2019)

Studio:      Giant Pictures
Director:    Tony Dean Smith
Writer:      Tony Dean Smith, Ryan W. Smith
Producer:  Ryan W. Smith, Tony Dean Smith
Stars:     Adrian Glynn McMorran, Magda Apanowicz, John Cassini, Frank Cassini, Aleks Paunovic, Bill Marchant

Review Score:

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Summary:

Clairvoyant visions propel a desperate man through a time traveling trip to prevent his death at the hands of thieves.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

James Odin, who randomly sees clairvoyant flashes of his future, rescues Angela from an alleyway assault. An unidentified man in a black hoodie joins the fray, but does not alter the outcome. James and Angela take a romantic interest in one another.

James’s former criminal associate Sal and Sal’s partner Terry take James to see Sal’s cousin Ray, who runs a crime ring from his drapery shop. Ray explains he needs to fence a pouch of valuable diamonds, and he wants James to use his ability to foresee a smooth transfer. James takes the diamonds as Ray gives him 24 hours to wait for a predictive vision.

Angela visits James at his apartment. Sal tasks Terry with breaking in and stealing the diamonds. After having a vision of being shot to death, James escapes with Angela in her car, but does not see who tried to rob or shoot at him.

Angela’s car breaks down. Angela learns James is clairvoyant when he accurately predicts their subsequent encounter with a police officer. James reveals he also foresaw his own murder.

James and Angela stop at a motel where James puts the diamonds in a safe. The couple then goes to a diner. James tells Angela his ability first manifested at age seven when he foresaw his mother’s death in a car accident. When they return to the motel, James discovers someone broke in and stole the diamonds.

Driven by another vision, James takes Angela to see his foster father Elliot. James explains the situation to Elliot. Elliot shows Angela a collection of predictive drawings James made as a child, which include one of Angela. James and Angela kiss.

Ray, Sal, and Terry break into Elliot’s home looking for the stolen diamonds. Ray accuses James of robbing him while James remains unaware that Sal set him up. Terry investigates a commotion outside. Someone shoots at Ray through the kitchen window. Ray shoots and kills Angela when she attempts to stab him with scissors.

Elliot injects James with a syringe that knocks him unconscious. When he recovers, James finds himself in Elliot’s house in 1994. After the two men sort their initial confusion regarding the circumstance, Elliot reveals his scientific research created a time travel serum. Elliot explains that test subjects develop clairvoyance. When James meets his seven-year-old self, Elliot adds that the boy has predictive visions because James already experienced those events. James wonders how he became involved. Elliot reveals James once appeared to him and told Elliot to specifically seek out his younger self in the foster home.

James realizes Angela died instead of him, which changed the timeline he foresaw. With James determined to save Angela, Elliot gives him a syringe that he uses to return to his past.

Staying hidden from his other self, James ends up injured in an encounter with Sal and Terry during the apartment escape. Another serum injection puts James at the motel while his other self goes to the diner with Angela.

At gunpoint, Sal and Terry force James to unlock the motel safe. James manages to wrestle away the gun and flees with the diamonds. Worried that James could expose their betrayal, Sal calls Ray to claim James stole the diamonds with Angela and is likely headed to Elliot’s house.

James rushes to Elliot and explains everything. James warns that his other self will arrive shortly. James gives Elliot the diamonds and asks him to turn them over to Ray to save Angela.

James hides outside during the confrontation between Ray, Sal, Terry, Elliot, Angela, and the other James. James fires his gun through the window at Ray to protect Angela, but someone else fires a bullet into his arm that changes his aim. Angela dies.

James uses the serum to go back in time again. James becomes the hooded man who tried intervening when he rescued Angela in the alleyway. James is inadvertently injected with the last of the serum during the struggle.

James returns to Elliot and dejectedly explains that Angela dies no matter what he tries to change. A flashback shows seven-year-old James asking Elliot why his mom still chose to drive when he warned her against it. Elliot tells young James that perhaps his mom died so he could live because she didn’t want to alter his future.

James becomes the man causing the commotion outside during the standoff with Ray. His subsequent struggle with Terry causes a dropped gun to inadvertently fire into the second James’s arm.

Remembering what Elliot said about his mother, James decides to sacrifice himself to save Angela. James rushes into the house and takes the bullet meant for Angela when Ray fires.

While bleeding from his wound, James reveals Sal betrayed Ray. Terry shoots Ray. Sal and Terry leave with the diamonds.

James blinks out of the house and reappears in Elliot’s lab in the past. With his dying words, James tells Elliot to find James Odin and adopt him. Elliot notices his experimental serum in James’s blood. In the other timeline, James reunites with Angela.

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Review:

Very little flab can be found on “Volition,” an otherwise nimble thriller from director Tony Dean Smith and his co-writer brother Ryan W. Smith. All of that fluff can be found in the first act.

James Odin introduces himself as a prototypical burnout. An alcoholic smoker sporting six days of stubble and a white tank top, James blows off his burly landlord’s demand for overdue rent. James might be able to make that cash quick. He doesn’t know why, how, or even when, but occasional flickers in his mind’s eye reveal flashes of a future that always comes true. This time James gets a glimpse at a boxing bout outcome, so he’s off to bilk a bookie bartender before returning to his unnoticed existence living above an auto repair shop.

On his way home however, James stops an alleyway assault on Angela, and the mutual interest they suddenly take in one another says a romance is about to bloom. Love has to wait though. Just as suddenly, and just as serendipitously, a car pulls up carrying Sal, James’s old criminal cohort freshly released from prison.

Sal and his partner Terry take James to see Sal’s cousin Ray, who runs a crime ring out of a fabric warehouse. Illegal business must be booming because Ray came into possession of ten million dollars worth of blood diamonds, and he needs James’s ability to help “see” around federal interference. James agrees and the first domino in his fate falls. Well, aside from all of the other dominos James doesn’t yet know he knocked over.

Sal and Terry plan to betray Ray and rob James. When doors get kicked in and guns start firing, James goes on the run with Angela. After the diamonds go missing mysteriously, visions drive James to seek help from his foster father Elliot. Unlucky for James, Ray thinks he took the stolen loot. Their standoff comes to a head when someone gets shot and subsequently bleeds out on Elliot’s floor.

There’s only five more minutes left in the story, but “Volition” hasn’t yet reached its midpoint. That’s because after the body drops, Elliot administers a strange serum that seemingly sends James into the past. Even with thieves, a new girlfriend, and magic formulas already in the mix, James’s unusual adventure has barely begun, and his clairvoyance will be critical in piecing the puzzle together.

Being a brain-bender steeped in parallel reality paradoxes and time travel trickery, “Volition” will have eyes, uncertain about what is or isn’t important, darting everywhere onscreen for clues. You could fill a notepad cataloguing split-second images from James’s brain such as windshield wipers, street signs, floor tile patterns, even misplaced cigarette packets while wondering how every cryptic bit fits together.

Despite these head games, “Volition” really isn’t too twisty to follow. Background noise like that from the landlord and bartender end up being irrelevant outside of what minor insight they add to James’s already established character. In fact, many of the movie’s details are mere MacGuffins with no nobler purpose than keeping sci-fi suspense spinning speedily.

Less a love interest and more of a prop, Angela qualifies as one such MacGuffin. So do the diamonds. It would be fair to argue “Volition” undercuts its fantasy by plugging in several props and people so thin, convincingness nearly cracks from the weight required by disbelief suspension.

But part of the movie’s magic lies in its knack for keeping intrigue hot on the front burner so simmering pots in the back don’t singe you with their logic-popping bubbles. It’s hard to get hung up on how fast the setup comes together when one result of that rush is a breathless pace that rarely allows time to linger on nagging questions. Once the premise dispenses with trivialities, “Volition” keeps its camera as active as the story. The snowballing melee makes an immersive mystery out of scrappy parts that may not seem like much on their own, but add up to an admirable indie effort that gets by on gusto instead of big stars and dazzling design.

“Volition’s” endgame focuses on engaging in rapid-fire entertainment, not being precious about its cleverness. Upon recognizing that fact, it becomes easy to simply go with the flow in order to enjoy the brisk runtime without slowing for exposition that wouldn’t make much material difference anyway.

Viewers are required to surrender desires for excessive explanation upon entering. For instance, anyone who gets stuck on the science of such premises is going to harrumph at a hypodermic injection that enables time travel, a cheap plot device if ever there was one. Yet “Volition” never asks for a similar sacrifice of intelligence, and that’s the dividing line separating the “good” time travel stories from the “bad.” A movie doesn’t have to justify how everything works as long as it doesn’t talk down to its audience. “Volition” only puts essential toys in play, and trusts viewers to get in on the game.

The film isn’t always as tight as it could be, particularly with respect to an ending that could tie loose ends more cleanly. But high concept fiction almost always comes with some clatter, and “Volition’s” doesn’t make enough noise to drown out its magnetic drama. A testament to how much the Smith Brothers manage to manufacture with a committed crew as well as their own intellectual investment, “Volition” shows what hungry filmmakers can do even when they don’t have the production money to match a wealth of novel ideas.

Review Score: 80

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