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57 Seconds Movie Review

 


 I am thrilled how Science Fiction films are touching on why we should not mess with things God made. In 57 Seconds, Fraklin Fox, played by Josh Hutcherson who you will recognize for his role as Peeta in The Hunger Games, is at a Health Tech Expo, where he finds this tech ring, he soon finds out that the ring allows him to a la Prince of Persia, turn back time 57 Seconds, and undo a mistake. The concept has been done before, I mentioned Prince of Persia, and in Galaxy Quest is the Omega Thirteen, but what 57 Seconds does different is that this time travel ability not only is used by a somewhat altruistic person, at the end of the story he decides to destroy it, that we should not have the power to manipulate time, that even 57 seconds can cause problems, as Franklin Fox learns when his Fiancee freaks out thinking he used the ring to keep rewinding time to find out all the things to please her and groom her for romance. Rarely does a science fiction brooch a topic with such questions as should we control time? Most movies and shows have time travel now and its crutch for them to ruin the plot of earlier installments or make up crazy stuff or drop a nostalgia inducing character from the past in the story out of nowhere. 57 Seconds does not do this, and it does not get grating like Ground Hog Day or Edge of Tomorrow where you have to see the same scenes over and over; you get enough variance and it stays on plot enough that the repeats are fun, one in particular when Franklin is trying to get a code to a safe made me laugh, "Do not make me kill you again!" It was so funny, because the guy is not a gunho person who wants to kill people, and he accidentally kills her the first time anyway. 

The overall message of the film is that we should not be masters of time. Anton Burrel played by Morgan Freeman wants to use this technology to eliminate accidents and to create perfect health, and in the film he is depicted as noble person, while his foil, Sig Thorensen is the Big Pharma guy pedaling Fentanyl like drug that killed the Fraklin's sister is the clear villain, but by the end of the movie Franklin says that we should not wield this power, and accept our choices, and I think about our God lives outside of time, "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing: that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (2 Peter 3:8). That He alone should manipulate our seconds, and it was refreshing for a film to affirm this, that even 57 seconds which doesn't seem like a lot, most of us would say that would be worth controlling so we could reverse things, like a car accident, which I get, but its controlling God is it not? Using that power we would be tempted to misuse it as Franklin does in gambling, and in other ways. If we could turn back the clock we could commit unspeakable acts, and while the world they would be undone if we went back, God still knows you made them, that in your heart you are capable of things that you try to conceal by leaping back.

I love this kind of deep thinking about our actions and if we had powers like the ring in the movie. The fact its a ring is kinda obvious, The Ring of Power in The Lord of the Rings being dangerous, and ironically there is a health device that has come out that is ring that allows you to check blood pressure, heart rate, do an EKG, and etc. The fact that much of this film revolves around health, and that the villain is Big Pharma, and the seemingly good man played by Morgan Freeman wants to use technology to take away our pain made me think of Elon Musk and his ideas of putting genetic chips in the brain. Even the source of the rewind effect of time being Quantum Crystals is something that has been found in science and is being studied. So this movie touched on a lot of interesting things, and concluded at where I think we Christians should bottom out at. We should not seek the powers of God to control time, cheat death with this body (we are promised a second body 2 Corinthians 5:1-6) and seek fast fortunes with bad people. 

I highly recommend the film, it has few sex scenes (nothing on Outlander or Game of Thrones level), the people are fully clothed, and the context of both is fitting to the story. There is violence like someone getting roughed up by Casino guards, and someone gets shot in the head. So be mindful of that, but I would say that compared to a lot of films and shows, this one is rather tame despite an R Rating. I think the questions is will provoke in you, and how to consider navigating the power technology could give us is worth ruminating on especially before it might happen with the advent of AI. Amen. 

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