Tick Tock

Rating

Director

Kevin Tenney

Screenplay

Kevin Tenney

Length

1h 35m

Starring

Megan Ward, Kristin Minter, Linden Ashby, John Ratzenberger, David Dukes, Hedy Burress

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
In Tick Tock, a married woman finds escape from her husband through an insidious plot involving a cowboy and a loner. This is an intriguing film that uses interesting storytelling techniques to convey a very tightly-drawn, yet complex plot.

Rachel (Megan Ward) is a rags-to-riches success story. She married Holden (David Dukes), a millionaire who adores his wife, but doesn’t trust her. Carla (Kristin Miller) is Rachel’s childhood friend, a photographer who secretly wants to help Rachel achieve financial independence without her husband controlling her life.

Carla has devised a scheme to get Holden out of their lives forever. She enlists the aide of a handsome drifter cowboy, Travis (Linden Ashby). Meanwhile, Holden suspects that Rachel is having an affair, so he has her followed by a private detective (John Ratzenberger), who has been on the job from day one of their marriage, keeping track of the perceived gold digger.

The film uses 15-minute story arcs connected with time-reversing graphics to look at each event through different eyes. While Pulp Fictionpresents its scenes in an unusual order as the film’s conclusion nears, in an effort to engage the audience in following its complex plot to a worthwhile end, this movie does something similar, but not exactly the same. In Tick Tock, we get individual scenes presented repetitively, with each repetition providing us with new information. The result is a set of enjoyable subplots that keep the viewer glued to the screen in an effort to piece the puzzle together.

There are plenty of twists and turns to keep the audience going, but – unfortunately – several uninspired performances may keep them from completing the effort satisfied. Ward plays Rachel too childlike and acts the innocent in order to elicit audience sympathy. The problem with this is that there are times when this act is so artificial that the audience feels it can no longer care for her. Ashby conveys a similar style through his bedroom eyes, but sympathy is easier for him to engender in the audience, as he tends to get the short end of every subplot in the film. Miller plays the sultry temptress with evil intentions, a staple of most twisted plots, with an appetizing flare, but when half the film passes and she’s still her same, old, ruthless self, the audience can’t help but feel bored by the characterization.

There are a great many good things about Tick Tock, and there are a great many weak elements. If you can overlook the less than thrilling performances, the fascinating storyline may be enough to keep most viewers hooked to the screen anticipating the next intriguing twist, even if the final scenes degrade into tradition.

Review Written

November 19, 2001