Movie Review: Synchronic

Synchronic is a 2020 sci-fi picture about two paramedics, one of whom is a time traveler. Sweet. Let’s do a little time traveling ourselves—back to when I thought I’d rented an EMS film.

I was two-thirds through that DVD before the story started to make sense. I don’t think that’s how movie scripts are supposed to work. If I wrote that way, I never would have passed Mr. Caras’s 11th-grade English class—the one where I had to read War and Peace. The first hour of Synchronic seemed longer than War and Peace.

I watched Synchronic a second time to better understand it. That helped, but the plot still had little to do with EMS. The two main characters could have been dog groomers instead of paramedics. Speaking of dogs, there’s a scene where…no, I’m not going to give away the movie’s most poignant moment.

Why was I expecting an EMS flick? Because the video company’s algorithm predicted I’d enjoy Synchronic and suggested I watch the trailer, so I did. It featured paramedics and ambulances; hence the probability of a medical theme. That turned out to be a major miscalculation—like assuming The Godfather is about Italian food because Don Corleone ate spaghetti.

Synchronic stars Anthony Mackie as Steve, a single paramedic who drinks heavily and sleeps around. In EMS? No way. But Mackie, who appeared with Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker, is versatile enough to portray Steve as a lonely guy who’d like to settle down if he could find the right girl—presumably one who wouldn’t mind him sleeping around.

Steve’s partner is played by an actor less famous than Mackie. I won’t mention his name because I’d have to look it up and you probably wouldn’t know him anyway. Let’s just say his character, Dennis, is on the outs with his wife and older daughter. Steve tries to help with tough love plus other kinds of love, one of which is sacrificial in nature.

Steve’s and Dennis’s ambulance rolls with two medics and a driver. You might want to use that fiscal fantasy to petition your boss for a third crew member. Just be advised that the purpose of the driver, other than driving, was to divert narcotics between calls.

As for time-traveling, it’s the most intriguing aspect of the film. Who wouldn’t want to see what the world looked like thousands of years ago? Suppose you could visit, say, a prehistoric New York City inhabited by primitive hunter-gatherers, just by swallowing a designer drug named…you guessed it: Synchronic. Or you could skip the pill, take the A Train to Times Square, and have a similar experience.

All of Synchronic’s century-hopping occurs in New Orleans, but most action lacks historical perspective. When Steve dodges artillery shells in some no-man’s land, we’re not sure whether we’re watching a battle from the Civil War or the War of 1812. During another retro-journey, Steve is accosted by a musket-toting woodsman who may be a slave hunter (Steve is black) or just some ornery cuss who doesn’t cotton to strangers. Such scenes are fleeting and not crucial to the film’s climax, but it wouldn’t hurt to clarify ambiguities and make the plot less farfetched.

If you’re a little confused about Synchronic, good. Now you know how I felt. It isn’t a terrible movie, but do you have time to watch it twice?

Mike Rubin is a paramedic in Nashville and a member of EMS World’s editorial advisory board. Contact him at mgr22@prodigy.net.