This time travel movie, obviously an intended pilot for a Syfy Channel series, is an amalgamation of The Time Tunnel and Seven Days. It begins in New York City, where someone has constructed a nuclear bomb--and it's going to go off in minutes. The person who created this is a scientist (David Cronenberg) who tells the government agent, Knox, interrogating him that the only way to prevent it is to bring back his wife. But the scientist's wife died in 1975 from a mugging. The bomb goes off and nine-million people die.
Months go by and Knox is brought to a secret base where scientist have accidently discovered a gateway in time. But this gateway randomly changes from different time periods, from 1920's England to 1700's China. The government wants to prevent the disaster from happening in NYC. When a gate opens to the 1930's in Washington, the opportunity presents itself. They can prevent the scientist's wife from being mugged--and killed--if they stop the mugger. From records, they find out that he was the driver in a holdup--so they may be able to intercept him and kill him. Of course, things don't quite go as planned...
There wasn't enough time in this pilot to develop the characters, from Knox to his African-America partner to the woman scientist, Dr. Lyndsay Price, who accompanies them (who hates/likes Knox). Jeff Fahey (Body Parts, Psycho III) steals the show as inventor Ellis, who sends these small, bug-sized cameras into the portals to scope them out. I did like that everyone who is in the building where the time portal is remembers everything from the other time-lines. The program ended on a cliffhanger, with a general bundling up in Arctic gear and walking into a snow storm time-portal. How did he know what exact portal would appear? And what has he changed? Recommended if you like time-travel movies.