Needle in a Timestack

Beneath its high-minded ambitions, Needle in a Timestack boils down to a fairly standard-issue love triangle with a science-fiction twist.

However, this character-driven genre mashup from director John Ridley — who won an Oscar for writing 12 Years a Slave — feels gimmicky and manipulative rather than poignant and profound.

The film is vague about whether it’s set in the near future or in an alternative present day in which time travel is commonplace and accepted.

Either way, urban planner Nick (Leslie Odom Jr.) and art photographer Janine (Cynthia Erivo) are an upwardly mobile, career-minded, successful couple whose life seems perfect on the surface. As the sweet nothings exchanged back and forth suggest, there’s little doubt about their deep affection for one another.

Gradually we learn secrets about their respective pasts, revealing Nick’s nagging petty jealousies about Janine’s ex-husband, Tommy (Orlando Bloom), whose sudden reappearance suggests he’s undertaking an expensive time shift in an effort to steal her back.

Nick and Tommy are former friends, but Tommy’s attempt to justify his actions doesn’t go over well. “The past doesn’t just belong to old history books anymore,” Tommy explains. “Now we can live it.”

As Tommy aims to rekindle an old flame, Nick tries to follow behind. But some of his memories have been lost, which evidently is critical in facilitating time travel, and the appearance of an ex-girlfriend (Freida Pinto) further complicates things. Reality and fantasy blur, prompting him to question his true feelings.

The time “jaunting” conceit in Ridley’s loopy screenplay — adapted from a Robert Silverberg short story — is muddled if intriguing, although Needle in a Timestack bogs down in meta-level mumbo-jumbo about the nature of time and relationships. It mixes romantic melodrama with a cautionary tale about technology creating barriers to human connection.

The committed performances draw us in even when the script turns pedantic, with Odom especially showcasing his versatility in a leading role. He generates hard-earned sympathy for Nick’s efforts to find closure.

Yet along the way, you’re so busy trying to follow the narrative logistics, and put all the pieces within the jumbled chronology together, that this meditation on desire and commitment seems more shallow than sophisticated.

Rated R, 111 minutes.