I saw the preview for Synchronicity and added it to my queue immediately. I was attracted to its 1980s retro take on a futuristic look. Synchronicity’s strongest asset is its visuals. Synchronicity is 35 mm, not digital, filmmaking Michael Mann meets Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner meets Danny Boyle’s Sunshine. Unfortunately Synchronicity’s story line failed to keep me captivated through the third act. A physicist creates a time machine, but needs the financial help of and resources held by a capitalist played by Michael Ironside. He encounters a suspicious, mysterious woman so Synchronicity becomes sci fi meets film noir.
Unfortunately I came for the sci fi, not the film noir lust/love story, and the latter dominates as Synchronicity unfolds. Synchronicity’s story is somewhat predictable, especially since time travel is the ultimate premise of the movie, but the film lost me when it became a movie about
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jumping to different parallel universes. It is too much, and my suspension of disbelief snapped like an overextended rubber band. At some point, the physicist trying to find a world where he can live with his love was too much, and I did not care about following the less predictable twists and turns of the plot. One imdb commentator did an admirable job of navigating for viewers who did not understand what was going on and wanted to. I could have tried to understand, but at that point, I did not care. Synchronicity just got too ridiculous for me. Who is the physicist on the bed while there are two others running around? I don’t care anymore. Bye.
Synchronicity breaks my Looper rule: you can only have so many sci-fi conventions in one film. You can have time travel or jump from one parallel universe to the other, but not both. Synchronicity is a beautiful failure that fell apart when it tried to tackle the complexity of love, jealousy and human nature.