It is 2524 and a couple on a distant mining planet are about to get busy when the woman hears something. The man declares that they are the only people on the planet. However, he goes outside and fires his gun randomly in the darkness. When the gunfire stops, he does not answer her calls. Uh oh. She calls the futuristic version of 911 and declares a first contact situation.
Within 10 minutes, General Ryle (Frank Grillo) is informed. The history of civilization meeting is usually one of conquerors and the conquered; Ryle has no intention of being the conquered. He wants James Ford (Bruce Willis) to be brought in and meet him at the base. Ford was the man who used a Q-Bomb, a weapon that will wipe out a solar system. He is viewed as a genocidal maniac for having done it. In less than 30 minutes, the survivors - including the woman who made the 911 call - are back on earth, having traveled by quantum jump. Of course, all of them have been taken over by the ill-defined aliens and are soon overrunning the base.
The movie has a kernel of an idea that is poorly executed. That future technology could transport survivors from some distant mining colony to Earth in a matter of minutes is impressive but immensely stupid. No sooner have the aliens arrived than they drop a tachyon transponder to signal where the homeworld is. Duh! They now have hours before an enemy with similar technology to humanity could arrived and drop a Q-Bomb. Brilliant. So, a small band of heroes don battle armor/spacesuits to make a quantum jump to the scene of the action; they bring a Q-Bomb.
Though Frank Grillo has top billing, his part is small and he mostly vanished from the film after the quantum jump. Bruce Willis plays an old veteran who shows all the energy and emotion of a potato. He could not be bothered to stick around for other character's lines and a stand-in took his place for other actors addressing him. There isn't a central character, as the story jumps from person to person. Let's see what Braxton Ryle, General Ryle's nephew, is doing? Let's have an emotional scene where Dash talks to a young girl and tells her that her sunglasses are really cool and everything is going to be fine. Now it is time for Dr. Lea Goss to complain about potentially exterminating an advanced civilization; it's a cosmic sin to do such a thing. Let's jump to the Q-Bomb technician and see how she copes with prepping the Q-Bomb for use and explains how she's just a technician and shouldn't be on the frontlines like this. Oh, hey, we have this hot sniper chick with a ludicrously large rifle; let's follow her for a bit.
The movie has bad pacing, a scattershot script, undeveloped characters, and several character deaths that are meant to be impactful but aren't. Who gave the greenlight to this picture? IMDb gave it a 2.5 rating, which may be generous.
Skip.
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