Year: 1997
Runtime: 82 mins
Language: English
Directors: Tripp Reed, Scott P. Levy
When a U.S. submarine slips into a temporal rift, a covert task force is dispatched to investigate. Emerging in an alternate, dystopian United States ruled by a single dictator, they join forces with underground rebels to overthrow the oppressive regime.
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Read the complete plot breakdown of Time Under Fire (1997), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
In 1990, the naval submarine USS Alabama unexpectedly slips through a portal in the Bermuda Triangle and vanishes, only to resurface years later with Captain Alan Deakins claiming he traveled into the future. The navy dismisses his tale and confines him to a mental institution. A paranormal research organization led by Jack Coleman as Lance McCarthy funds a bold expedition to recreate the fateful accident and uncover the truth. A government official, Bryan Cranston as Charles Braddock, authorizes Jeff Fahey to mastermind Deakins’ breakout so he can join the mission. Before departure, Deakins visits his heartbroken wife Jeannie, who holds onto the fragile hope that he is still alive.
The expedition, including Deakins, Lance McCarthy, and Linda Hoffman as Marjorie, leaves the next morning. The submarine breaches the portal and is soon attacked and boarded by a hostile military force. The leader, Richard Tyson as Koda, claims to recognize Deakins and takes the crew prisoner. In custody, Deakins meets Spitz, who drops a chilling clue: they are stranded in a post-apocalyptic year 2077, where a dictatorship led by Braddock holds power and Deakins’ son John is the leader of a rebellion. The guard who oversees them savagely kills Schmidt and assaults Marjorie; Deakins stops the massacre, revealing the brutal price of this future world.
Spitz helps Deakins, Marjorie, and Hawks escape from prison, and the group heads toward the rebels’ base. They meet Alan’s son, Jeff Fahey as John, who explains Braddock’s plan to build an army of cyborgs capable of perfectly imitating humans. John recruits the time-displaced crew to mount an assault on Braddock’s stronghold and recover the crucial computer chip that enables the cyborgs’ creation. Braddock orders the elder Deakins killed to reshape history and prevent John’s birth, a move that only deepens the tension between timelines.
The team infiltrates Braddock’s base, secures the chip, and rescues Deakins. John and Cole are believed lost in the escape, but John reappears and helps them mount a return to their own time aboard a submarine. They race back to 1997, pursued by Koda, who is finally defeated as their vessel destroys his craft. Back in the present, Spitz notices something off about John’s behavior, and soon discovers that the young man is a cyborg clone; Spitz’s warning comes too late, and John is ultimately destroyed.
Deakins returns home to a pregnant Jeannie, while Hawks is exposed as a traitor who has passed the cyborg chip to Braddock. Lance confronts Braddock in his office and, after a tense exchange, shoots Braddock only to discover Braddock is a cyborg clone as the real Braddock reveals himself with a weapon aimed at Lance. A violent confrontation erupts at Deakins’ home, ending with Jeannie and Hawks dead and Hawks’ treachery laid bare.
With Braddock’s death, the immediate apocalypse seems foiled, and Spitz is brought in to explain the tangled events to skeptical government officials. Yet the doorway between times remains blurred: Spitz confirms Jeannie’s death, which would erase John’s future existence, and the officials murder Spitz. The conspirators hide behind the illusion of control, but Spitz eventually realizes that Marjorie—the very Marjorie from the rebel faction—is the key to the timeline, the woman who would eventually give birth to John and ensure the ongoing rebellion in the shadows of history.
Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 11:06
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