MetalGeek When you buy as many DVDs off the dollar rack at Wal-Mart as I do, you tend to watch such films with extremely lowered expectations. Occasionally one film rises above what I'd expect from a mere "dollar DVD" and THRILL SEEKERS (sounds like a title for a porn film, doesn't it? It's also known as THE TIME SHIFTERS, if anybody cares) is one such movie. THRILL SEEKERS has an interesting concept and a decent script but unfortunately becomes a victim of the low budget constraints placed upon it by its made-for-TV origins. THRILL SEEKERS stars Casper Van Dien (of "Starship Troopers" fame, who is unfortunately one of the most wooden actors of his generation) as a formerly ratings-hungry TV reporter who left his job in disgrace after his insistence on getting "one more shot" during a spectacular warehouse fire got his camera crew killed. Desperate for work, he takes a job as a reporter for a sleazy "Weekly World News" style tabloid newspaper and is given an assignment to write a story on famous disasters throughout history. While researching archived photographs of such catastrophes as the Titanic sinking and the Hindenburg explosion, he notices the same black-suited man in each photograph, and he doesn't appear to have aged a day even though the events took place years apart. His editor sends him on a plane to Washington to do more research at the Library of Congress, and it just so happens that the same black-suited guy is on his plane. (Don'tcha just love coincidences like that?) He accosts the stranger and finds out he's a "Thrill Seeker," a time traveller from the future who is taking a "tour" of famous disasters. His presence on this plane, of course, means that it's doomed to crash, so Van Dien hijacks the plane just in time to avoid a mid-air collision (thanks to a clip borrowed from the film "Turbulence," according to the end credits). The black-suited guy is nowhere to be found when the plane lands, but Van Dien has stolen his computerized "tour itinerary" book which tells him the next disaster is going to be a subway crash in Chicago. Escaping from the local police and with his research assistant from the newspaper (played by Catherine Bell of "JAG") in tow, he races to stop the "Thrill Seeker" before the crash can happen. Unfortunately, the "tour company" in the future is now threatened since they've been discovered (not to mention, Van Dien's halting of the air crash has "altered the time line" of course), so two assassins (who look like they borrowed their outfits from a "Matrix" yard sale) are sent back to try and eliminate him before he can screw up the future any further. Confused yet? The rest of the film is basically one chase scene after another, as Van Dien and Bell avoid both the police and the hired killers while trying to reach the final disaster on the Thrill Seeker's itinerary, a catastrophic fire at an arena during a hockey game. (Some additional tension is added for Van Dien's character by placing his ex-wife and young son at the game.) I wont' tell you how it all turns out but I will say that THRILL SEEKERS kept my interest even though trying to keep up with the constant "timeline changes" and how they affected the characters did become a bit of a headache after a while. I'm sure that more hardcore sci-fi fans would find a lot to pick apart in THRILL SEEKERS, and I'm surprised that I liked it as much as I did, but for a buck I can't complain, can I? THRILL SEEKERS turned out to be an unexpected treat.

damien-16 Zapping through the movie channels last evening, I came across: Next feature presentation: Thrill Seekers with Martin Sheen. I wonder if one could sue the channel for this kind of tendentious (but not factually wrong) publicity? Anyway, it made me decide to watch. Hardly any Martin Sheen, but entertaining for sure, and with surprisingly decent special effects for a TV movie. The plot is intelligent, and would be a good starting point to get people to discuss the paradoxes of time travel. Suppose you could go back and kill Hitler before he came to power, would you do it? But if you would, can you be certain nothing worse would happen? And how would it affect your own life? Would you still exist, even? (My parents met because of the war.) Or: if you go back to a time after you are born, can you meet yourself? All of this is hardly original, of course. SF writers in the golden age (which was sadly ended by Star Wars, shifting from intelligent writing to blockbuster special effects) frequently tackled the issue, for instance describing the butterfly effect: a firm organises time trips to the Jurassic, where thrill seeking (again!) hunters can kill a dinosaur a fraction of a moment before it would have died, thus not altering the time line. But one hunter stumbles and accidentally kills a butterfly. He gets back to his starting date, but the killed butterfly has changed the time line and this new line turns out to be the hunter's worst nightmare. Something similar happens in Thrill Seekers. But here the protagonist has the means to go back in time to change a future he has already experienced. This, of course, was already obvious from the moment they take the laptop from the disaster tourist. In fact, Merrick could have used that device to go back to before he boarded the plane and, using some kind of subterfuge, a bomb alarm for instance, avert the plane crash, and the subway crash, and the fire... But we wouldn't have had the same film then.One question of logic though. If Merrick goes back into his original time line, the time guards would also be in there, but unaffected by what will happen later. In the film, they follow Merrick back from the future. The film does not explain this. But the question doesn't end there. If you go back to when you were 3 hours earlier, you would also not yet have any memories of what was going to happen those next 3 hours. Merrick and the time guards should not have had any knowledge of the disaster happening 3 hours in the future.I also wonder how the title sequence relates to the film. I admit I wasn't paying a lot of attention, trying to figure out when Martin Sheen would be mentioned, but in retrospect I wonder if there wasn't any subtle message in the sequence?

mderx2001 I started watching this movie because I saw Martin Sheen was starring, but as I gradually found out, he only appears on a flickering screen about 3 to 4 times for less than a minute. It's clear he's only on the casting list to attract an audience. But in the end it really didn't matter, I was somehow a very entertaining movie, the bad acting didn't spoil it. Also you could predict the plot quite easily but that didn't make it less interesting, somehow even more interesting. Do not wonder how it is that everything is so coincidental. Just watch it with a pizza and a beer after work and you'll have a good time watching this B-movie.

johnnymonsarrat We don't expect much from made-for-TV movies with a cast of unknowns. But actually, the Time Shifter is an engaging, well-acted science fiction piece that got me thinking.Primarily, this is due to Casper Van Dien, who plays the starring role, which involves a lot of running around frantically, determined to explain what's going on to himself and others through various natural disasters.Who should see this film:-- Science fiction movie buffs-- Action movie buffs comfortable with the science fiction genre and with nothing better to do-- Time-travelers looking to waste a little time in-between stopsI'll give "The Time Shifters", which you can find in video rental, a 7 out of 10.