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Let's do the timewarp again, and again

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Friday, Mar 23, 2007, Page 16

Wakey, wakey, sunshine, your husband's death was just a dream ?or was it? PHOTO COURTESY OF CMC

Blind faith that all will be revealed can keep you glued to a movie long after the arrival of that sinking feeling that none of what you're seeing can possibly add up. As you watch Premonition, a psychological thriller that scrambles time in the life of a desperate housewife, you imagine that the director, Mennan Yapo, and the screenwriter, Bill Kelly, must have some notion of where they're heading, so you suspend your doubts, invest your emotions and go along for the ride. After all, aren't these Hollywood professionals who know something about storytelling? And didn't a major star (Sandra Bullock) sign on to the project?

The movie seems to be headed in several possible directions. Is it a supernatural Gaslight? A Hitchockian psychological mystery like Marnie or Vertigo? An M. Night Shyamalan party trick with a jack-in-the-box ending? None of the above, it turns out.

The sloppy, absent-minded Premonition is a giant step backward for Bullock, who plays Linda Hanson, a woman with a perfect home, a perfect husband and two young daughters. Linda's world suddenly crashes around her when the local sheriff knocks on the door and tells her that her husband, Jim (Julian McMahon), has died on a business trip when his car was hit by a truck.

Film Notes: Premonition Directed by: Mennan Yapo Starring: Sandra Bullock (Linda Hanson), Julian McMahon (Jim Hanson), Nia Long (Annie), Kate Nelligan (Joanne), Amber Valletta (Claire), Peter Stormare (Dr. Norman Roth), Courtney Taylor Burness (Bridgette), Shyann McClure (Megan). Running time: 97 minutes Taiwan release: Today

Grief settles over the Hanson household. Linda gently breaks the news to her daughters, Bridgette (Courtney Taylor Burness) and Megan (Shyann McClure). And her mother, Joanne (Kate Nelligan), and best friend, Annie (Nia Long), rush to her side to flutter around offering solace.

But when Linda wakes up the next morning, she goes downstairs to find Jim contentedly sipping coffee and watching television. His death must have been a dream, she concludes. Soon after that she wakes to find the living room filled with anxious mourners. There is a spilled bottle of lithium in her bathroom sink. But the following morning she finds Jim in the shower. Is she losing her mind? After some tentative sleuthing, she decides that through a temporal mix-up, she has learned of Jim's imminent death before it takes place.

The story brings in an ominous psychiatrist, Norman Roth (Peter Stormare), whom Linda has consulted but can't remember; enigmatic answering-machine messages; and Jim's blond co-worker Claire (Amber Valletta), who shows up at his burial and looks suspiciously like the Other Woman. There is some shady-seeming business involving Jim's recently jiggered life insurance.

The movie veers toward horror, with Linda eventually dragged kicking and screaming to a mental hospital. Later, after we learn that the Hansons' marriage has been in unspecified trouble for some time, the movie takes a turn toward the spiritual, with Linda consulting a priest who regales her with mumbo-jumbo about how her confusion stems from a lack of faith.

With a dozen loose strands still dangling at the two-thirds mark, Premonition abandons the psychiatric subplot to become a simple melodrama in which Linda, who has pieced together a timeline of past and future events, dashes to the scene of Jim's accident to try to prevent it.

Bullock, who proved she could act in Crash and Infamous, returns to nonacting in Premonition. Embodying a paranoid but plucky Everywoman clutching at an elusive mate while trying to maintain her sanity, the best Bullock can manage is to seem glumly opaque.

McMahon, with his Mephistophelean eyebrows, dead eyes and slack mouth, walks the same line between Mr. Right and Mr. Wrong as his character, Christian Troy, does in the cable series Nip/Tuck. All he has to do to suggest sinister motives is to twist his features into a sour expression and address his wife in a blase tone. Even in his Mr. Right mode, you'd be an idiot to trust him for a millisecond.
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