Title: THE HANDS OF TIME (1 & 2)

Starring:  Nadia Buari, Van Vicker

Synopsis:

A woman with psychic abilities is in search of her sister only to find that she was murdered. 

Review:

Dante (Nadia Buari) possesses psychic sensibilities and seeks to connect with her estranged sister. Unbeknownst to Dante, her sister is looking for her as well. Unfortunately, Dante’s sister is murdered before they meet and Dante sets out to avenge her death. 

Let’s Talk. The movie starts out intriguing and Nadia Buari is believable as Dantee, a financially challenged woman with psychic abilities. It goes wayward fairly quickly due its substandard execution of story.

In one scene, Papa (Van Vicker) and Dantee are communicating over the computer and Dantee types: “I can’t afford to loose you.” Clearly she meant the word “lose” which has a completely different meaning. It’s disheartening and embarrassing that such an elementary word would be misspelled. If producers are going to show written text, the message must be spelled correctly. There are times when slang and abbreviations are used but that was not the case.

It’s imperative that editors with a great command of the English language be utilized on films so that such errors are not released for the world to see. Unfortunately, there were other grammatical mistakes such as the use of punctuation marks or lack thereof.

What’s also annoying is a scene where the audience had to hear a message that a phone number was not in service at least ten times. Are they serious? We get it. The phone number isn’t in service! There are other creative ways that they could have shown that Phyll was still trying to reach her sister without repeatedly playing the message. Sigh….

As for more blunders, later in the movie we saw a newspaper clipping that stated “Phyll is presumed dead” after she hadn’t been seen for two days. Who presumes someone dead after just two days? There are many instances where a person is missing for a longer period of time and reappear. Here the writer was trying to force the story along without logic.

In part two, we saw an onscreen announcement that informed us that Dantee “wiggled her way into Kwabena’s life and marries him.” This sort of subtitle is normally seen at the end of a movie to inform the audience of what became of the characters. For such a notice to be planted mid-way into a movie is a cop-out. Surely, five minutes could have been spent on showing Dantee’s transition from the poor girl to modern woman and another scene to display how she incorporated her way into Kwabena’s life. After all, seeing events unfold is why we watch movies.

“The Hands of Time” was also filled with tacky and silly dialogue. Unfortunately, this is not Van Vicker’s best movie and hopefully not his signature piece as Director/Writer. The only way for him to hone his skills behind the camera is to continue making movies. The old adage “practice makes perfect” still holds true and the hands of time will reveal this. Pun intended. EJECT

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