2:22

Because 14:22 isn't catchy enough a title...

This review is also up on Channel 24.

What it's about

Dylan is an air-traffic controller whose preternatural ability to see patterns in everyday events makes him both very good at his job and gives his life a certain amount of predictability. His life soon takes a turn for the decidedly unpredictable, however, after he nearly causes two planes to crash into one another and meets the woman of his dreams – who also happens to have been a passenger on one of those planes – on the same day. It's around this time, as well, that he starts to notice certain events repeating themselves day in and day out – all culminating in a “bang” at 2:22 PM – a “bang” that may be related to an act of violence that happened decades previously.

What we thought

The fact that 2:22 bears more than a passing resemblance to a mixture of the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episode, “Amends”, the X-Files episode, “Monday”, and whole chunks of Donnie Darko should cast an inescapable pall over the film, as it is neither as good as any of these individual elements nor, of course, even remotely original. That it's also a rather silly exercise in quasi-mystical mumbo jumbo and a not particularly convincing romantic thriller should be more than enough to bury it as, if not one of the worst films of the year, then at least one of those that really belongs in the bargain bin of your local video shop (remember those)?

I'm clearly just a sucker for cheesy romance, quasi-mystical mumbo jumbo, and the unbearably gorgeous Teresa Palmer, then, because despite everything that's so obviously wrong with 2:22, I can't deny it: I had a whale of a time watching it.

The secret here, I think, isn't that the film is so bad that it's good, so much as the film is so unapologetically itself that it's hard not to go along with it. Not in the sense of ironic self-awareness – it's not smart enough, cynical enough or funny enough for that to be the case – but in the sense that it knows exactly what it is and rather than shying away from its own silliness, it embraces it.

Director Paul Currie is not a well-known name – I, for one, haven't seen a single one of this Aussie director's past work – and this is literally the first film for writer, Todd Stein (who co-wrote the screenplay, based on his own story, with the somewhat more accomplished Nathan Parker, of Moon fame) so it makes sense that that, for all of the staleness of its ideas, there is a certain amount of freshness and unjaded energy on display here. That it moves briskly through its very respectable 98-minute running-time certainly doesn't hurt matters either.

What does leave something of a bruise, though, isn't the supremely clunky dialogue, increasingly absurd plot-contrivances or shoddy supporting performances even by good actors – this is a b-movie; it knows it and so do we – but that the afore mentioned lovely Ms. Palmer is very badly matched with Game of Thrones' Michiel Huisman as the film's central couple.

Even in a movie this daft, Palmer brings her A-game, once again making one wonder just why the hell she isn't a much bigger star than she is, and she simply acts her co-star off the screen every time they appear together. Huisman is certainly sufficiently handsome and likeable enough but while Palmer comes across as an actor just a project away from her big break, Huisman is still just that bloke out of Game of Thrones. Their chemistry, as a result, though hardly unaccounted for, always seems a bit lopsided and not entirely believable.

Whatever, though. Again, this should be a critical failure but, even with the central romance of this romantic movie not entirely working, the film somehow still remains standing. This isn't anything to rush out and see but if you're looking for a Saturday night flick to kick back and have some bonkers fun with, you could do a whole lot worse than 2:22.