Wasted Time

LIKE A GOOD MANY science fiction movies. TimeRider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, introduces an intriguing idea and then systematically blows it. "Lyle Swann" is an off-road motorcycle racer who, while speeding across the desert during the "Baja 1000," suddenly finds himself transported back to the year 1977. A science research company, it seems, is conducting time travel experiments in the desert when Swann unwittingly passes into range of the time-travel equipment. The "science" of all of this, of course, seems improbable at best. (Even a believer in time travel might expect the research company to take the precaution of keeping their experiments clear of the Baja 1000.) But if we forgive the technological inconsistencies surrounding Swann's journey through time, the ploy presents some lively possibilities.

Time travel has entranced readers and moviegoers for generations. To travel forward is to discover the mysterious future. But to travel backward in time seems even more exciting--it offers mortal man the chance to play God. That is all an audience really wants out of a movie like this. There is a bit of Walter Mitty in each of us that yearns to travel back to yesterday and dazzle primitive folk with airplanes, calculators, Bic fighters and tape decks. Unfortunately TimeRider won't take us there.

Soon after he has been transported back in time. Swann, played by Fred Ward, comes across a trio of dandle on the run from "the Law." After recovering from their Swann in his bright orange racing suit and helmet, the bandits begin shooting it him. Swann quickly roars off. The leader of the gang shouts to his cohorts. "I want that there ridin machos. From here the plot degenerates. Swann rides on to a small Mexican village with the Gringo bandits following him on horacbrck, and the rest of the movie is a case of the good gave in the village against the bad-guy bandits. Sex, violence, and all the irritating cliches of a Grade-C Western are included.

Where the movie should have focused on the interplay of the 20th-century Swann and the 19th-century villagers, it remains fascinated by old-fashioned gunplay. Director William Dear seems to have decided that audiences would never be happy without a shoot-'em-up subplot. All the audience really wants, however, is to see Swann use a little modern-day unfortunately, the cowboy subplot wins out over any such fun.

In anything, Swann and his modern gadgetry seem impotent in the West. His motorcycle offers him no protection from the bandits' six-shooters, and Swann himself carries no modern firearms. Consequently, none of the other characters in the movie seems too impressed by him. Perhaps the weakness of the plot lies in the fact that it's a motorcyclist--rather than the commander of a tank or the pilot of an F-14--who is sent back in time. In the end of the movie a helicopter--sent by the research company to find Swann--is very nearly shot down by a six-shooter, and we have to wonder what good all this technology is anyway.

There are some amusing moments, as when the head bandit (Peter Coyote) attempts to start the motorcycle by jumping up and down and kicking it, or when Swann--after initially arriving in the village--offers to reverse the charges if they will let him use their phone to call L.A. And there are some funny scenes between Swann and Claire, the love interest, played by Belinda Baucr. But we keep waiting for a scene which never comes in which everything will become clear in Swann and to the other characters. Swann never really explains to the other characters where he comes from; we are never even sure if he realizes he has been sent back in time.

One of the few bright spots in this otherwise dismal production is ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith's snappy, techno-country-Western soundtrack. But Nesmith also co-wrote the juvenile screenplay, and it seems a clear Indication as in where his talents lie.