User Reviews

Although set in NWT, it looks like credit goes to Quebec for getting their logo into the film credits. So I can't change my opinion that pretty much the only good films in Canada get funded by Quebec, and apparently this is now true even if the language is English.

I checked out the reviews, and I seem to be in the minority. I've visited the north, but not that far, and I never lived or worked there. If there's an inside joke to this film, I didn't get it. It seemed like a straightforward tale of the ideal young man sent to straighten out the evil slave driver, and free the helpless slaves. It's a common-enough story, but why not retell it, if it can be told well?

There are some truly goofy things in it that take away from it, like the "garbage eater" stuff. I'm fairly sure more colourful language would have been used, and as other comments noted, if they could share trash with a bear, they could probably also find other food to eat, less risky. Even I can find things to eat in the wild, without much effort. And of course, no person is THAT good and THAT lucky and THAT smart all of the time. Interesting heroes have flaws.

But on the whole, there's a lot to like. I like that some of the characters might randomly kill someone, or are otherwise bizarre. That's reality, now isn't it? The scenery is beautiful, as is Craig. I did not find the details of the story predictable, so the journey was interesting. The story has a good Canadian quality that is absent from so much of Canadian film. You can tell it's from here AND it is set here, but it doesn't make you want to stab your eyes out. I don't get to say that often enough.

I think this film was aiming a bit higher (or could have) but it's 7/10 for me, which is a great score for English-language Canadian film.

Take a sadistic villain with the psychological depth of a cartoon character. Add a goody-two-shoe hero, who comes to right the wrongs in this world (and who never in 52 days of fleeing through the wilds or working in a chain gang never, ever needs a shave or runs out of hair gel). To this simplistic recipe, add a few supporting roles and extras who lack any interest or dialogue or intelligence (I mean, wouldn't you just catch fish or eat berries rather than scrounge scraps out of discardedtins in the garbage heap?). In their flight from the camp from hell,one character leaves (but you guessed it, he'll come crawling out of the woods just when he's needed) while another, the stereotyped strong, silent Indian who has no dialogue other than grunting in the direction of the river bank, simply disappears, with none of the other characters seeming to notice or care. (I suspect that his native wisdom told him he'd be better off in some other movie that actually had a script.)

With every line of trite text, the sparse audience I saw this film with emitted groans, then nervous giggles, then was left in stunned silence at the dreadfulness of it all. I think about half a dozen of us actually managed to hang on until the final credits. Everybody else did what the exploited laborers in the film didn't have the good sense to do: they simply walked out and did something better with their time.

My two fellow reviewers, we are certainly concerned to give due recognition to all things "up north." And we desire beyond a doubt to recognize films put together in places we know by people like ourselves. To say The Timekeeper(2009) may not win Genie is going too far! Both the inventor of this film's drunken bum dialogue - Samuel Beckett - and his protégé in the theatre who invented the post-dialogue world of aimless thugs - Harold Pinter - they both won the NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE. So, here we are, take a look at your lifetime expectations - "As my father used to say, a man can lose everything, and then have nothing." We are living in Harold Pinter's universe. Some of it's features are 1) garbled conversation as it would sound tape-recorded from real life, 2) an uninterrupted feeling of menace that 3) explodes sometimes into pointless violence. This brings us to an explanation of why my two fellow reviewers thought The Timekeeper an unfamiliar movie to most people. There's no sex in it. There aren't even ANY WOMEN.