When Time Expires Reviews

Watchable but unmemorable, WHEN TIME EXPIRES is base-level science fiction centered around a very tenuous premise. The film premiered on The Movie Channel prior to a release on home video. Space alien Travis Beck (Richard Grieco) arrives in a small town on Earth with a simple mission: insert a quarter in a parking meter at a specified time. He meets and falls for local girl June Kelly (Cynthia Geary)--something strictly forbidden by his bosses at an alien faction called "The Ministry," since any interaction with an Earthling could affect the planet's future. Meeting up with his former partner Bill (Mark Hamill), Travis discovers that not only is the Ministry planning to infiltrate Earth, but that three assassins from another alien faction, called "The League," are after him. Travis tells June who he really is, but she doesn't believe him until her father, Walter (Chad Everett), reveals his own alien past--he is, in fact, an ex-member of the Ministry who chose to resign after landing on Earth. Meanwhile, Travis finds out something the Ministry didn't want him to know: his seemingly innocuous mission will, if executed, prevent a chain of events that would lead to a nuclear disaster. Realizing that Bill is involved with the assassins, Travis kills him in self-defense and confronts the killers. Their leader, Rifkin Koss (Tim Thomerson), explains that the League wants to use Travis to expose the Ministry's error. Koss allows Travis several hours to collect proof of the cover-up, but instead, Travis returns to June and they make love. Travis kills Koss and his henchmen in a shoot-out, but he is beaten unconscious by Tom (Matthew Mahaney), an ex-boyfriend of June's (who had threatened him previously), just as he is nearing the meter. June fulfills Travis's mission and deposits the quarter in the meter herself, thereby preventing disaster. Seeing Travis on the ground, she passes out. When she awakens, the future has changed so that June is living out her dream of owning a horse ranch with her father. Travis, now a stranger, appears asking for riding lessons and they begin a new relationship. WHEN TIME EXPIRES is a harmless time-passer that can only sustain the viewer's interest for a short period of time; it's the sort of thing that fills up pay-cable schedules in the late-evening hours. Obviously dealing with a low budget, the moviemakers wisely avoid sci-fi trappings for the most part; instead, the film plays like a western-comedy-romance hybrid with one of the silliest premises in recent memory (the fact that a quarter placed in a parking meter could avert a nuclear war--because it would prevent a certain individual from getting a parking ticket, no less--is pretty shaky terrain for a sci-fi thriller to start from). Richard Grieco, the star of many such bargain-bin obscurities, and Cynthia Geary both perform well enough, but writer-director David Bourla's script is such a minimalist affair that the two barely have any character traits to latch onto. Even the subplots provided to strengthen the two characters are hopelessly derivative: it is revealed that Travis was the Ministry's star employee before being wrongfully blamed for a tragic accident that was actually partner Bill's fault; June, meanwhile, is shocked to discover she's really half alien. A few of the supporting performers, particularly Tim Thomerson and Pat Corley (playing Travis's alien computer interface) distinguish themselves, but they can't do anything to improve this muddled fantasy. (Violence, sexual situations.)