Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Reset Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 5, 2018

Films or television shows about time travel are almost inherently convoluted, if often kind of crazy fun, as can be gleaned in everything from the Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: Season One. Reset desperately wants to be another insanely labyrinthine trip through an actually fairly narrow window of time, but it rather oddly mixes time travel with parallel universes, which any science fiction nerd worth their salt will tell you are not synonymous. It’s a completely peculiar gambit, and one which is technically unnecessary, as both of the above linked entries have proven, since both Back to the Future and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency feature the same characters appearing in various “forms” from different timelines together, at least in passing. But one of Reset’s fundamentally confusing aspects is that its whole conceit is based on the premise that time travel is only available courtesy of hopping to an alternative universe which is, for all intents and purposes anyway, exactly the same as the one the time traveler is traveling from. Got that? If not, it doesn’t really matter, since this overamped production is probably too ridiculously melodramatic too much of the time to ever really achieve much more than a general sense of frenzy. The film begins with a very brief text crawl describing a high tech competition between two companies which have been working on wormholes to parallel universes with the attendant ability to travel back in time a couple of hours or so in the process, to which some enquiring minds may respond: why? Well, there wouldn’t be a film otherwise, obviously, since focal character Xian Tan (Yang Mi) has to keep going back just an hour and a half or so to attempt to rescue her darling son Dou Dou (Hummer Zhang), who is kidnapped by the nefarious Tsui Hu (Wallace Huo), who has been tasked by Xian’s competitor with getting all of Xian’s research.

Did you know that there is such a thing as the Jackie Chan Action Movie Awards? I frankly didn’t until I started researching background on Reset and discovered that it won the 2017 trophy for Best Action Movie Actress. Now that’s all perfectly fine, except one wonders if a little “corporate nepotism” might be involved since Chan is widely touted in the credits and even on the cover of this particular Blu-ray release as the film’s producer. (In a kind of funny synchronicity, the next film in my review queue, Extraordinary Mission, evidently took home several Jacke Chan Action Movie Awards in 2017.) That said, Yang Mi makes for an appealing “set” of heroines, as her time traveling and parallel universe hopping escapades end up with her essaying several versions of Xia Tian, in a conceit that kind of unavoidably reminded me of Orphan Black: The Complete Series. One of the other elements this already overstuffed set of plot mechanics offers is that those subjected to these “travels” tend to become a bit unhinged, exhibiting almost feral aggressive behavior, something that of course plays into the narrative as things progress and Xia Tian goes the Groundhog Day route in her repeated attempts to save Dou Dou (not surprisingly, different things go “wrong” each time).

Individual vignettes in Reset actually deliver a fair amount of adrenaline pumping action, and as should probably be expected, several set pieces are expertly staged. The film offers an array of special effects wizardry that may appeal to those who like bright, shiny objects, but there’s a curiously rote feeling to a lot of this film, down to and including the supposed “twist” toward the end that reveals all of this mayhem had an ostensibly unexpected source (any armchair sleuth will probably see this denouement coming long before it’s actually displayed).

It kind of boggles the mind why Reset goes to such lengths to over complicate its story. The hook of a desperate mother scientist repeatedly returning a couple of hours into the past to save her son, along with the attendant “gain in population” as subsequent iterations of her show up into an already developing (and indeed developed) timeline would seem to be more than enough to satisfy most science fiction nerds (a category I proudly admit to belonging to). I frankly just don’t get what all the parallel universe nonsense ultimately gives the story, other than a needless layer of complication, especially when it all amounts to a veritable hill of beans and/or data cylinders in the long run. There was also one glaring (to me, anyway) lapse in logic in this film with regard to who is ultimately revealed to be the culprit behind it all. For those who watch the film, after you’ve gotten to the big “Moishe the Explainer” part revisit an early scene in the film where this particular character’s “employment status” (I’m trying to be as circumspect as possible) doesn’t seem to have affected any interactions with that character’s evident superior. But, Reset is one of those films where it’s probably best not to ask questions like that, or in fact ask any questions at all, since so few really coherent answers are forthcoming.

Reset Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Reset is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. As kind of oddly seems to be the case with some Well Go USA releases, there's visible banding in both the Well Go USA masthead, as well as several other production logos that play before the actual film, but the good news is once the actual presentation starts, there are no further noticeable instances. This is an appealingly sharp and well detailed presentation the majority of the time, with the only deficits in fine detail accruing due to some fairly heavy grading (once again toward the inevitable blue), as well as some shots that are dimly lit or bathed in the haze of smoke from explosions or, in a couple of cases, where characters are traveling through a rather dark wormhole. Some other grading strategies, as in a kind of warmly honey colored flashback Xia Tian experiencing thinking of her son, look great, with excellent detail levels across the board. The CGI in this film is generally quite sharp looking.

Reset Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Reset features a rather impressive DTS:X mix in the original Mandarin (though a few lines are actually spoken in English). Huge washes of both synth pad sounding score choices as well as ominous LFE regularly spread through the surrounds, and in a couple of cases sound like they're wafting overhead. The film has a glut of action adventure set pieces, including explosions, car crashes, car chases and various battles and skirmishes, all of which offer a nonstop array of great sounding effects that are often placed with pinpoint accuracy to create a very lively and accurate seeming soundfield. Dialogue is cleanly rendered and often appealingly directional in this very enjoyable track.

Reset Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:04)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-rays, the disc has been authored so that trailers for other Well Go USA releases follow the trailer for this release automatically. Those other trailers also play at disc boot up.

Reset Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Reset is one of those releases where a pretty appealing technical presentation can't quite make up for a story that is largely a shambles. Those who can let a number of head scratching plot dynamics just unfold without getting too worked up over them may well like this frenetic attempt to reinvent the time travel thriller, but those who require their science fiction outings like this to actually make any sense may be woefully disappointed.