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From 2004 comes this week's movie mistake, Retrograde. The movie stars Dolph Lundgren and some guy named Joe Montana who never even played football. The film starts in a dystopian future of 2204, and Dolph Lundgren so well known for being a clear and well-spoken orator is the narrator of our story. It’ll be fine.
Dolphy is being sent two hundred years in the past to prevent space bacteria from being unfrozen in Antarctica. Hey, wait a minute that’s this year. I’m sure that’s just a co-winky dink. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. With him is about a half dozen other people who are genetically superior, don’t worry one of them is a black woman, to make sure we don’t mistake them for nazis. It’s not like Dolph is short for Adolph or anything. Suddenly, all the future people wearing all-black motorcycle leathers mutiny on the half wearing black and red motorcycle racing leathers. A shootout ensues and soon everyone on Dolph’s side is dead, but he bravely fights his way into the cockpit. Heh, cockpit. There he shoots someone dead, and there’s a pool of blood under the dead body. I don’t mean he bleeds out. I mean in a fraction of a second a large human-sized pool of blood there, It’s fine though. Having borrowed the CGI software from the folks who made the Scorpion King, the spaceship, and … well … all of outer space leaves a lot to be desired.
Meanwhile, on Earth, some people look like sciencey interns on a large boat doing some vague science shit, when Dolphzilla’s spaceship crashes nearby. The next morning the boat is heading straight for an iceberg, but it’s fine. The captain says it’s time to go home, but the rich capitalist funding the thing insists they continue. Which is a classic recipe for disaster, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.
It turns out Dolpharino survived the crash as did a few of the bad guys and now they’re out hiking around in the snow. The bad guys shoot Dolphie Poo, and when they go to poke at his body with a stick it turns out he’s fine. They fight and somehow all of them get knocked out and separated.
The science interns, the capitalist, and … some other guys are now exploring the arctic wasteland on snowmobiles looking for the meteorites. But since the meteorites magnitized everything their radios and compasses don’t work. But since “The wind only blows in one direction here” they can still find their way home. I mean yeah, at the North Pole the wind only blows South. I’m not sure that helps navigate though. They stumble upon Dolph-alino’s body and decide that they can’t leave him there so they quickly and easily carry him back to the ship, so apparently they weren’t in as much danger as they thought they were when the snowmobiles died just a moment ago.
The bald bad guy, who isn’t a skinhead nazi also regains consciousness and he’s even closer to the snowmobile wakes up, and somehow they didn’t see him. He runs off. Dolph wakes up fully refreshed and knowing the lady science interns name.
Looks like the snowmobiles are working again, and then, they aren’t. And we have just four random dudes wandering around in the snow now. I’m sure this plotline will pay off at some point.
Dolph wakes up and the lady science intern is all like damn he’s fine. Then the stationary ship lurches and everybody falls, including the dude science intern who falls on broken glass and a meteorite he collected earlier. The Lady intern helps him clean his wounds, but as soon as she leaves he wonders to the rec room and starts destroying the place, and the rec room supervisor, a very important and necessary role on a science vessel for a room that consists of 2 pinballs machines and a jukebox, call the doctor for help. “There’s something wrong with Mac?” What do you mean there’s something wrong with him?” His skin has changed” What do you mean his skin has changed?” He’s going nuts” What do you mean make a house call?”
So Doc eventually wonders his lazy ass down there and the place is trashed, then the captain shows up too. The rec room supervisor told them that his skin was turning red like he was being burned from the inside out, which I rewound 3 times and never saw any red skin, so …. It’s fine.
Our snow mobilers are now wandering around the spaceship our bad guys are now somehow back on. They die rather quickly at the hands of the baddies since we haven’t even bothered to name them. Oh wait, there is one who isn’t dead cause he escapes to tell the tale.
Dolph is now wandering around the ship, looking for the bathroom I guess, when he stumbles upon the sick dude, shooting at every other person we’ve seen in the movie who isn’t already dead or one of the bad guys. He just watches though as patient Zero gets shot and unalived.
The Lady intern, Renee is watching and photographing the autopsy which is disturbing to her. So doc tells her to go get a hot cuppa joe, and she attempts to leave the room by a walk-in freezer door labeled “cold storage.” I’m sure her sense of direction is just fine though.
Meanwhile, Dolphie-poo is trying to convince the Captain, the rich guy, a few members of the crew, and the doctor who is magically in two places at once, to let him go outside and get his gear. But won’t tell them why to cause it’s classified. Then the skipper is reminded that the snowmobilers exist and should have been back by now. But since they have had no communication with them, they must be fine.
Dolph is left alone in the rec room but stages a daring escape by lighting a fire and punching the guards. He then acts like everything is fine casually wanders outside and gets his gear while the crew smashes a fake snowball with a pick axe. The last surviving snowmobiler comes jogging back, telling his tale of woe about being attacked.
Doc and science lady look at some x-rays and decide Dolph has lung cancer, but also has a higher lung capacity better than anyone else, and he’s like super healthy. Renee, the science gal, takes the Xrays to her room for some alone time with them, when Dolph wanders in, with his gear asking to see the meteor fragments. She tells him that she can’t without asking the captain first. Dolph is like “But I need to see them.” So Renee is all like, “Well since you put it that way … fine.” Dolph asks where she found the meteors and she tells him they turned up in the impact crater of his spaceship. So it’s one of those self-fulfilling time travel thingies.
The captain decides to back that ass up and reverse the boat out of the ice flow, and the bad guys decide to board the ship. So here comes the big action sequence. The bad guy shoots at Dolph’s backpack full of explosives and he’s fine with it, because he’s a badass, or because plot hole. And while escaping he runs into the doc, who’s now infected and he infects Renee. Dolph vaccinates her, though, so …. I’m not sure why he didn’t do that to patient zero.
The crew is arming themselves to fight back with guns against the bad guys with space weapons. They shoot at each other, sometimes they miss, and sometimes they don’t. A few of the good guys including the rich guy escape for help via helicopter, which brings the sun up with it as it takes off or something cause I swear it was just nighttime. But it gets blown up.
Dolph sends Renee to unload one of the never-ending supply of snowmobiles so they can make their escape. But she gets captured by the head bad guy. Dolph is planting explosives around the ship, so he doesn’t notice her getting captured, or escaping. But of course, the bad guy tries to recapture her, and the first mate, who had been named Markus up until this point but is now suddenly known as Max, fights the bad guy until he’s dead. The bad guy exits the boat with Renee, and Dolph leaves the boat and blows it up. He fights with the bad guy, both of whom have wet hair and their jackets hanging wide open despite being in the middle of an arctic snowstorm. The bad guy dies, Renee who has been shot, is dying. Dolph in a moment of compassion asks her where the meteor field is, and leaves her in the snow to die the ship sinks and Celion Dion starts singing.
Dolph plants his last bomb in the meteor field, jumps in his spaceship, and takes off! The end. No wait. Now Dolph and Renee are in some diner, and he just convinced her not to go on the trip in a single sentence. Thus avoiding the entire plot, and maybe that should have been plan A to begin with. Saved us all a bunch of misery.
In summary, Retrograde would be best enjoyed by someone with retrograde amnesia, because the plot is so bad the writers should be … fined.
Retrograde is available streaming on Amazon Prime.