Set a couple of decades in the future, in A Sound Of Thunder mankind has developed the technology to travel back and forth through time. A typically evil corporation lead by one Charles Hatton (Sir Ben Kingsley of Ghandi) offers those with enough money to pay the fee the chance to travel back to the time of dinosaurs, look a tyrannosaurus in the eye, and kill it before heading back into the present day, safe and sound. They've got it all figured out to ensure that no one messes with the time-space continuum, inadvertently screwing up the future for generations to come – or so they think.

When one of the guns freezes up and doesn't fire during a trip, the group panics and one of the time tourists winds up stepping in something and bringing it back with him. No problem, the 'bio detector' thing will catch it, right? Wrong! Cheap ass Hatton didn't want to pay the energy costs associated with the device and so he hasn't been using it in years, unbeknownst to everyone else. With history now completely altered, strange things start happening around Chicago where the company is based. Creatures that look like Raptors with baboon faces are running around in the park killing people. Plants are growing at an alarmingly fast rate and starting to demonstrate violent tendencies, and it all looks very, very bad for mankind, especially with giant 'time waves' sweeping over the whole planet once a day.

Thankfully for the fate of the planet, we've got Travir Ryer (Edward Burns, that guy from Saving Private Ryan who kind of looks like Ben Afflack but isn't) to save the day. He manages to track down the reclusive and moderately sexy English lady (Catherine McCormack who was quite good in Shadow Of The Vampire) who created the computers that allow the time travel to happen and enlist her help in their quest to save the day. Will they be able to go back in time further to prevent the initial mistake from happening or will the monkey-raptors and giant plants kill everyone first? Will the giant bats eat anyone? Will the big black bugs running around everywhere eat anyone? Please tell me someone will get eaten by some sort of monster…

Thirty minutes into this turkey, and you'll probably be answering those questions with a rousing… WHO CARES!

Peter Hyams, who had previously directed End Of Days and Relic - two reasonably entertaining action/sci-fi hybrids – takes a big poop all over this one, which is a shame as the Ray Bradbury short story on which the movie is based is actually quite good. Though the film starts off well enough, the first generation Playstation video game CGI monsters get really old really fast and when the performers aren't convincing acting alongside these creations, why should we invest enough of ourselves into the movie to be in the least bit concerned for them?

In terms of the actors, no one is going to take home an Academy Award here but on the other hand, no one is terrible either. Kingsley tries in spots to work with the cliche ridden material he's been given to work with and at times he is an interesting supporting character. Burns lacks charisma or enthusiasm here but at least he does look the part of a time traveling action hero and he handles the action scenes pretty well. McCormack looks good and, like Kingsley, does the best she can with the material she's been given to work with but again, there's the badly rendered monsters that just completely suck you right out of the moment making the threats seem idle and making the whole thing very hard to get into. Low brow special effects are fine if they're done well or at least with some vibrancy or spark of life but sadly the graphics here have neither, they're simply flat, as is their impact.

It's unfortunate that A Sound Of Thunder didn't have a better effects budget and therefore better production values, as it really did have potential. The cast is alright, the premise is actually very good, and the idea of it all is an interesting one but it just lacks so much in its execution that at an hour and forty minutes it feels overly long and quite frankly, by the time the characters get around to trying to solve the problem and save the day, the entire affair has gotten dull.

Video:

The 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer presents the movie in its original aspect ratio and for the most part, the image does very good, as is more often than not the case with Warner Brothers' recent releases. There is some edge enhancement present in a few scenes as well as some shimmering and aliasing in spots but there's very little to complain about otherwise. Black levels are strong and deep, there are no issues at all with print damage, dirt or debris on the picture and there's a very pleasing level of both foreground and background detail present throughout the picture. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and the reds are well defined without bleeding through.