A Sound of Thunder

Ray Bradbury's original short story of the same name—an unnerving morality tale about modern man's arrogant disregard for nature—ends with time-traveling dinosaur hunters returning to the future to discover that by stepping on a single butterfly, they've altered history inexorably (and the hunters become trapped in an alien world of their own making). But this blasphemous bomb “adaptation” not only misses Bradbury's point entirely—using his ending as a jumping-off point for an action-adventure attempt to fix the hunters' mistake—it's also a nonstop cacophony of bad acting, ludicrous science, and conspicuously cheap special effects, that can't even follow its own internal logic from one scene to the next. Stoic, beer-and-cigarettes guy's guy Edward Burns (15 Minutes) is unconvincing as a genetic scientist, although slightly better than the movie's dinosaurs, which look like giant plastic toys. Director Peter Hyams' (The Relic, End of Days, The Musketeer) cinematic debacle isn't even good for a camp laugh—it's just a series of repeated slaps in the face to both Bradbury's source material and common sense. Not recommended. (R. Blackwelder)