Thrill Seekers (1999)

Thrill Seekers
Starring: Casper van Dien, Catherine Bell, and -- as (only) seen on TV -- Martin Sheen
Director: Mario Azzopardi
Writer(s): Kurt Inderbitzin & Gay Walch 
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Year: 1999
My rating: 

The cover of my copy of THRILL SEEKERS features the title in a appropriately scary font. Directly above it appear the words: "Your passport to danger." But the picture the DVD company chose to use was one of a bored-looking Casper Van Dien taking a phone-call. Perhaps this is not quite conveying the thrill that the filmmakers were seeking.

Actually, despite the dull cover, THRILL SEEKERS is actually a decent little made-for-TV movie. The story is predictable, but fun. The actors do a decent job. And the direction is of a slightly higher caliber than one would reasonably expect.

Casper Van Dien stars as a former hot shot TV reporter who is now reduced to working for a World News Weekly style tabloid. While researching a story about famous historical disasters (the Titanic, the Hindenburg, etc), he happens to notice the same man appearing in different file photographs who looks exactly the same regardless of how many decades separate the events (the revamped Doctor Who would -- six years later -- use the same plot point and the same bad Photoshop technology).

Taking this knowledge with him on a flight to D.C., Van Dien is rather disturbed to see the same man sitting across the aisle. Putting two and two together and managing to avoid a horrific air-disaster, he finds himself on the run from a pair of threats. One is the law enforcement of his own time who aren't quite buying his explanation of "Sorry, officer, I had to hijack the plane in order to save it." The second is from two assassins of the future whose very existence depends on Van Dien not using his new-found knowledge to alter their timeline.

Along the way, he teams up with the tabloid's chief archivist, Catherine Bell, who I was most familiar with from her role as the woman in the uniform on that show about fighter jets and courtrooms. Martin Sheen also has a part to play in Earth's apocalypse. Literally videophoning-in his performance, he is an angry CEO from the future seen only on a small screen barking technobabble at his time agents.

I will complain about a certain plot point which is all too common in these types of time travel movies. If the plot involves changing history and then you kill off one of the main characters, I am not going to be especially surprised if somehow the dead person gets brought back to life. Stop trying to shock me like this. The bigger surprise would be if you killed off the person, and then left them dead. 

I find myself with not much to say about THRILL SEEKERS. It's predictable, the production values reflect its made-for-TV status, and it takes itself a little too seriously. But I sort of liked it. The pacing is good -- swift enough that you don't really notice any of the story oddities. Some of what I enjoyed I'm hesitant to describe for fear of providing spoilers, but it's a diverting enough way to spend an hour and a half.