Time-travel thriller ‘Reset’ takes itself a little too seriously
IN THE near future, people can travel to the near past. This allows the heroine of Reset, a paradigm- shifting scientist named Xia Tian ( Yang Mi), to hop backward in time - all of 110 minutes.
That doesn’t give her much leeway to save her five-year- old son from his death, which she has just witnessed.
In this frenetic Chinese sci- fi adventure, Xia Tian is always pressed for time. She has nearly perfected an “artificial wormhole” that allows chronological tourism. A single mom, she dotes on her son, Doudou ( Hummer Zhang), whose favourite superhero is also a master of time.
Xia Tian works for a Chinese company that, while harbouring corruption, isn’t quite as rotten as the American competitor that has hired a ruthless operative ( Wallace Huo) to steal her new process. He’s such a formidable opponent that Xia Tian summons two familiar-looking allies in her rescue mission: alternate versions of herself from slightly different timelines.
Had he directed, producer Jackie Chan might have handled this nutty scenario with a lighter touch. The film’s Korean director, who uses the single name Chang, takes it all very seriously, although he emphasizes action and suspense over pseudoscience.
Breakneck chases, highaltitude jeopardy and split-second rescues upstage everything save for a flowery moral: No technological breakthrough is more disruptive than a mother’s love.