Morgan Freeman Starred In An Overlooked Sci-Fi Movie Based On A Classic Short Story

Morgan Freeman has been in so many movies throughout his six-decade-long (and still counting) acting career that even if you're a big fan, it's not rare to discover a film you had no idea he was in. It's something that happens to me frequently, and one of the reasons is that Freeman did a lot of bad flicks in addition to his strongest ones. You probably know this the same way you know that Samuel L. Jackson also does this on a regular basis (he's never been shy about it, that's for sure). Rusty Cundieff's 2023 sci-fi thriller, "57 Seconds," is a good example of one of those. It's only a three-year-old movie, but it looks and feels like it was made in the early aughts when Freeman frequently popped up in a bunch of forgettable thrillers like "Along Came a Spider" and "High Crimes."

Based on E. C. Tubb's 1999 short story "Fallen Angel" (a revised version of the author's 1969 short story "Lucifer"), "57 Seconds" follows tech blogger Franklin Fausti (Josh Hutcherson), who's hell-bent on exposing the pharmaceutical magnate Sig Thorensen (Greg Germann). Thorensen is responsible for creating the painkiller Zonastin, a highly addictive drug (much like OxyContin) that destroyed and took the lives of millions, including Franklin's twin sister. In his quest to take Thorensen down, Franklin interviews tech mogul Anton Burell (Freeman) — after saving his life when a stranger attacks him during a presentation — and later finds his ring he accidentally dropped. As he puts it on, Franklin learns that it's a device that can make its wearer travel back in time for 57 seconds. He uses it to get money, a girlfriend, and to take down Thorensen's business empire.

Given its highly derivative plot and approach that brings to mind Nicolas Cage's flashy sci-fi "Next" among other genre flicks, it's not hard to imagine the cheap B-movie trappings that "57 Seconds" inevitably fell victim to. It's a cheesy, unoriginal, and incredibly dull flick with a virtually non-existent marketing campaign. Frankly, it's a miracle it received a theatrical release in addition to a digital one instead of just being dropped on streaming with no promotion, hoping for the best. Accordingly, its box office performance was a complete failure, only making a million dollars and change against its $7 million production budget.

The few critics who subjected themselves to watching and covering the sci-fi didn't help its cause much either, since the majority of their reviews were scathingly negative. As of this writing, "57 Seconds" has a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes in addition to a 38% audience score. Frankly, you'd be better off watching Stephen King's sci-fi horror "Dreamcather" — which was also a flop upon release but has been finding an audience lately – rather than Cundieff's numbingly tedious feature. Unless you're a hardcore Morgan Freeman completist who doesn't skip even the worst flicks the legendary actor picked for likely financial reasons. In that case, good luck, and be strong.