Yesterday's Target (1996)

Let's be realistic.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Paul Harper (Baldwin) has telekinesis. Jessica Harper (Haiduk) can see into the future. And Carter (Carter) has flame-throwing abilities. These three unlikely allies are on the run from Winstrom (Burton) and his boss Holden (McDowell). It seems Winstrom also has special powers and is after them. Also they can travel through time and are all in our present day. It's never made completely clear why any of this is happening. Who will become Yesterday's Target? If you look up the phrase "video store shelf-filler" in the dictionary, there just might be a picture of Yesterday's Target. Also you have a pretty awesome dictionary. It's an out-and-out sci-fi slog, but the filmmakers might have figured that if they get a good cast and make sure it's 79 minutes long, viewers could tolerate anything. Well, this movie proves them wrong. The short running time, which we normally approve of (usually for action movies) seems too truncated to support a science fiction film with some complex ideas. It's choppiness would indicate that there's plenty left on the cutting room floor.As for the cast, clearly LeVar Burton was trying to shed his "Reading Rainbow" image by playing the baddie (not entirely convincingly) both here and in his episode of "Deadly Games" on TV at the time. He has an evil hat that makes him look like a sinister Herman Cain. Presumably that's all you can do to make LeVar look eVil. Malcolm McDowell does almost nothing, although in one scene there is a poster for A Clockwork Orange (1971). You can practically see director Barry Samson snickering to himself about how clever and "meta" he is. Actually, you can imagine him doing that throughout the course of this turkey. Daniel Baldwin puts forth a modicum of effort, as do Haiduk, Carter and Herd, but you can't really blame them for not bringing their A-game to this dud. Interestingly, Baldwin calls a character "Sparky". In Desert Thunder (1999) he calls someone "Slappy". Is Baldwin ad libbing this stuff? If so, are these the only ad libs he can come up with? Does he call people "Sparky" and "Slappy" in real life? What would you do if Daniel Baldwin called you one of these names? These are the true mysteries of Yesterday's Target.Special mention should go to Trevor Goddard, who we are fans of. Even his screen presence can't save things. Yesterday's Target is the type of movie that would be played on the Sci-Fi channel before they became "SyFy" and got into the whole phase of movies about dinosharks, dinocrocs, sharktopuses, sharktopiranhas, giraffehippobirds, slothtoadchickens or whatever else these geniuses deem as top-shelf Science Fiction. Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke would surely be proud. But as far as Y'sT, at least there's no CGI to screw things up even further. Adding to the annoyance is that all the characters are continually arguing, and there's little-to-no character development, so you really don't care about their plight.Yesterday's Target is pretty darn bad. Despite the cast, you'll want to avoid this one.

The main problem with this movie is that most of the actors are out of their league with this kind of genre.I had not really seen Levar Burton in much else, but he really does NOT have much of a handle on playing the heavy/the villain. Cuz he really stinks up the joint here. The chick (stacy haiduk) is not too good either. And the guy who played a role in Seinfeld had best stick to comedy. Baldwin is not that great, either, although he does a better job than anyone else but Carter, who acts serviceably. The two "agents" are pretty bad, too!So basically this movie does not have much in the way of acting.However it has nice production values and a nice stylish look to it.And the script is not that bad; not great, but not bad.Not a bad movie to watch if you have some time to waste, but nothing sepecial.

This film had great possibilities had it had a bigger budget, better acting and realised Daniel Baldwin is by far the worst actor among his brothers as he makes a pretty poor hero and sleepwalks through his role. Malcolm Mcdowell as his usual hammy villain,is poorly underused with about 3 lines throughtout the movie. the guy from star trek should definatley stick to Star trekDon't be mislead by the hilarious quote on the box'anyone waiting for terminator 3 should look no further''could have been great but as it is most people will have seen this kind of thing made better in the past6/10

In this unwatchable "story" of four time travelers who come to our time from what appears to be a post apocalyptic future, Daniel Baldwin, in a performance where he is mostly catatonic, attempts to rally his three compatriots to stop the evil doings of Malcolm McDowell. It seems there was more to the story at some point in the making of it, but what would amount to the "good parts" seem to have ended up on the cutting room floor.