Synchronic: A nice concept but with acting so bad Anthony Mackie seems good

I have no love for Anthony Mackie because I think he is a terrible actor. Everything from his facial expressions to how he expresses anger is just tiresome to me. No matter what his emotion is, he will get this tense expression on his face that is identical no matter what the situation is actually calling for. He was for the most part destined to be a side character and this became truly apparent to me when he was in Pain and Gain where he was seriously out of place next to Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg.

The idea behing Synchronic is sound and also a quite interesting addition to the science fiction world, but ultimately this film will end up falling flat with most viewers because the acting is so bad by nearly everyone in the film.

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_{that's the expression right there. He has it on his face in basically every scene in every film he is in}

The story in this film is that Steve (Mackie) and his partner and friend Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are a paramedic duo that work primarily at night as first responders. They encounter a bunch of things in their calls but for the sake of the film they start to focus almost entirely on drug overdoses since that is what is necessary in order to move the storyline.

They start to arrive at rather bizarre crime scenes in crack-houses or frat parties where extreme violence has broken out and even start to notice rather strange weapons that were used in the attacks. Since everyone is stoned out of their minds the witnesses are unable to provide any sort of real help as to what the hell happened there. Thankfully, they do not focus on this a great deal in the script but we are just meant to believe that the junkies are incapable of remembering anything - and this is fine.

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_{Same dead expression, no matter the scene}

After a while the duo starts to notice empty wrappers at each of these similar OD scenes and it is a packet of something called "Synchronic" and of course the police are presented as being uncaring nitwits so it is up to the paramedics to get to the bottom of this. Steve ends up finding the source of the capsules which are at a vape / weed shop located in town. He asks for ALL of the product that they have only to discover that he is being followed. The person following him turns out to be the creator of the drug who gives him the low down on how Synchronic enable the user to travel through time to a place that is dependent upon where they happen to be sitting when they take the pill. They are transported to the same place they are standing but at a different point in history. In this film at least, this is always in the past.

Steve, realizing that he is dying of a terminal illness anyway, decides to use himself as a guinea pig to see what the drug does, and records all of it and eventually discovers, sort of, how to control it. He of course has no idea when he is going to travel to and a lot of these places end up being dangerous.

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_{if his back wasn't turned to the camera I can still guess what expression he has on his face}

I've probably spoiled too much of the movie already but trust me, this is just a small and rather inconsequential portion of the overall story. Synchronic has the potential to be a great conceptual sci-fi ride, but in the end poor acting on almost everyone's part leads it to be kind of an accidental comedy. When Anthony Mackie is the best actor in a film you automatically know that it isn't going to be very well-executed.

I think that this concept could be built upon and perhaps executed by other, more talented staff and actors. I still enjoyed Synchronic at least as much as almost any sci-fi film I have seen recently. However this doesn't take away from the fact that the acting for the most part is just embarrassing.

Should I watch it ?

I think for people who really enjoy science fiction that this could be a winner provided you can get past Mackie's very wooden acting and the near complete lack of acting capabilities on the part of 90% of the rest of the cast. The idea behind the film is sound and the special effects were surprisingly good considering their very small budget.

This film failed to make almost any money at the box office, which is no real surprise give the cast and the genre.

On the other hand though I feel as though I might be giving this film higher marks than it actually deserves based on the fact that Netflix is slowly slipping into oblivion and at this point I expect very little from anything I see on there.