'Dead on Time's biggest asset is its cinematography. The film opens with a spectacular shot of a car driving through a bright yellow desert. Throughout the film there are some great shots in the desert. Unfortunately, that's as impressed as I was with the film.
The film is marred mainly by its lead star, John Sjogren, who stars as agent Tom Bruise. His lackluster performance left very little to be desired. He seemed completely unenthusiastic - as if he was sitting reading a script, or filmed during dress rehearsal. He didn't put an inch of effort into it. Apart from his bland performance, the character itself was uninteresting, boring, and presented itself with very little to no heroic material.
The acting in general was unconvincing and the new invention (being able to control time) was not believable. Regarding Michael Madsen, this surely must be his most passive and tedious role to date. He sits in the same position for the entire movie talking on a phone, with the background clearly added in post-production. It would have been better without this character. Even just a voice on the phone instead of giving him screen time, would have worked better. The film's dialogue was also very unoriginal and cliched.
The other big issue I had with the film, was the pacing. Some scenes that could and should have run for a minute or two at most, were running for five minutes or more due to repetitive dialogue that had nothing to do with the issue at hand - a lot of which was supposed to serve as comic relief. Considering the film was made as recent as 2018 - with so many resources available to the film industry - the visual effects were quite bad. This is a low budget movie, and sadly it shows. Forgive me for being blunt, but there were moments when it looked like a film school project - especially with Sjogren as the protagonist!
With a myriad of action films out there, 'Dead on Time' will not satisfy action buffs in this competitive market.
Would I watch it again? No.
