Time and Tide

Time and Tide is a dynamic action film that was quite fascinating, not least because it was unclear whether the story really was riddled with holes, the subtitling was exceptionally poor, or whether you as a viewer were simply an amateur in the art of understanding the Asian way of telling a story. Unfortunately it seems that the story is rather incoherent, but the subtitles also seemed rather imprecise and sometimes downright wrong.

Especially at the beginning of the film it is hard if not impossible to keep track of the characters and their relationships, as there are lots of jumps in time and place. Later the plot is more straightforward, and it ends up as a more traditional action drama, but the film also has poetic moments.

The protagonist Tyler is a young man living on the edge of the law, but when he gets a girl pregnant, he decides to take responsibility for the child's welfare - even though the girl wants nothing to do with him. To earn money for the child, he takes a job as a bodyguard, read: henchman for a mafia boss.

The former hitman Jack has lived the life Tyler dreams of, but now that his wife is expecting, he wants to make a fresh start. Jack and Tyler run into each other by chance and take a liking to each other, but soon they find themselves on opposite sides in a life-and-death showdown.