IN REVIEW: AMAZING STORIES (S1 – EP5) – The Rift

Synopsis: When a World War II fighter plane crashes in front of a young widow and her stepson, they become embroiled in a secret government plot.

The Story

Amazing Stories gives us another time travel story in which a World War II pilot crashlands in the middle of Ohio and gets helped by a Widow and her Stepson as they become embroiled in a U.S. Government effort to send the pilot back to his own time of 1941. Of course, the boy and his mum are on separate sides of the issue when the lad decides to help the pilot evade the authorities whereas the boys mum stays with the Government who think that the time traveler is the course of various Earthquakes that have happened in the past when similar rifts have opened between our time and the past. Adding the drama is the fact that the mum is wanting to drop the young boy with his aunt while she heads to California. So there is a family rift that needs fixing too.

The Acting

Austin Stowell does a great job with his portrayal of the pilot who strikes up a really good acting chemistry with young Duncan Joiner who plays the boy who is called Elijah. The scene where Elijah tells the pilot about his late father who lost his life in Afganistan was sensitively handled and cemented Elijah’s bond to the pilot which made things more heartbreaking when the two had to say goodbye.

Edward Burns puts in a solid performance as Government official Bill Kaminski who is charged with the difficult task of sending the pilot back to his own time.

Overall

This was a pretty good story, but not all that original given that we have seen similar things before. The only new spin was the fact that time travel was seemingly the cause of Earthquakes and so on.

The actors did a great job of selling the story and the relationship that forms between the pilot and young Elijah is what kept me engaged in the story. At times though I felt this story rushed things a little in order to fit within the 50-minute format. But perhaps that was just me wanting to see a little more time spent with Elijah and the pilot.