A physics teacher and amateur pilot Nick Miller, Matthew Bruch, finally turns the dream of time travel into a reality, coaxing a Commodore 64 and a small airplane into a working setup. Spurred by a flashy GenCorp TV commercial, he engineers a bold ruse to draw out a GenCorp executive and a local reporter, hoping to turn his breakthrough into a licensing deal. The reporter is Lisa Henson, Bonnie Pritchard, an old high school flame who rekindles forgotten memories as they test the limits of the device. A first jump to the year 2041 places Nick in front of GenCorp’s inner circle: Matthew Paul, Peter Harrington, a GenCorp executive who quickly arranges a meeting with the company’s enigmatic CEO J.K. Robertson, George Woodard. Impressed by the promise of freedom that time travel could offer GenCorp, Robertson lays out a licensing agreement that seems to align with Nick’s ambitions.
Over the next week, Nick and Lisa cross paths at a supermarket before embarking on a date that slips back to the 1950s, a playful detour that tests their bond and the machine’s reliability. Yet another journey to 2041 reveals a troubling truth: GenCorp has warped Nick’s invention into something that could reshape the future into a bleak, dystopian present. When Nick tries to warn J.K. about the looming catastrophe, he is met with cold skepticism; the CEO dismisses the risk, arguing there will always be time to address it later. J.K. views Nick as a potential threat to GenCorp, especially given the device’s ties to the U.S. Government, and he begins to treat the young inventor as treasonous. Undeterred, Nick and Lisa escape GenCorp’s reach and devote themselves to reversing the damage, racing against a clock that is increasingly running out of options.
The pursuit intensifies as J.K. devises a way to neutralize the threat: he and Matt attempt to shoot down Nick’s plane. In a traumatic sequence, Lisa is killed in the crossfire while Nick leaps clear, leaving the present tense splintered by grief and a decision to undo everything that led here. The story hurtles back and forth through time, culminating in a clash that lands in 1777 during the American Revolution. In this stark moment, the fates of Nick and Robertson collide—both die—and the time machine is destroyed before the original demonstration, ensuring that the bulk of the film’s events may never have occurred at all. The remaining Nick, now acutely aware of the danger his invention poses, sabotages his own demonstration and pivots to a sharp, practical pitch: a future ad campaign featuring an elderly skydiver for J.K.’s company, a move that triggers Matt’s firing. Nick also erases the crucial data that makes time travel possible, a decisive act to keep the timeline intact from further tampering.
In the aftermath, Nick confronts the paradox of his choices and, in a quiet, poignant closing scene, speaks with Lisa in the grocery store as he did in the earlier timeline, suggesting that some connections endure even when time itself is in flux. The film leaves a lingering question about what is gained when one tries to rewrite the past, and whether the stubborn pull of a shared memory can survive the dangers of a machine that reshapes reality.
