Donovan’s Echo

Donovan’s Echo follows Danny Glover’s title character as he returns to his hometown after a 30 year absence and eventually, through a bizarre form of déjà vu, becomes able to see into the future, with Donovan’s newfound abilities bringing him into contact with a grieving widow (Sonja Bennett’s Sarah) and her inquisitive young daughter (Natasha Calis’ Maggie). Despite the sci-fi bent of its premise, Donovan’s Echo, for the most part, comes off as a low-key and almost excessively slow drama revolving around a broken man’s ongoing efforts at getting his life back on track. And while filmmaker Jim Cliffe does a nice job of peppering the film with intriguing sequences and interludes (eg Donovan saves Maggie from a falling hand saw), there’s simply never a point at which one is able to wholeheartedly work up any real interest in (or sympathy for) the protagonist’s continuing exploits. (This is despite a predictably solid performance from Glover, as the actor does a superb job of stepping into the shoes of this mentally-unbalanced figure.) It doesn’t help, either, that the mystery at the movie’s core, involving the identity of Sarah’s husband’s murderer, is just not intriguing or compelling in the slightest (and, making matters worse, it’s always patently obvious just who the actual culprit is), which ultimately confirms Donovan’s Echo as a passable short film that’s been painfully, needlessly stretched out to feature length.

** out of ****