Plot
Lyle Swann (Fred Ward) is a well-known dirt bike motorcycle racer who is in the desert competing in the Baja 1000, a multiclass vehicle cross-country race. Swann has a reputation for being a great rider but is plagued by technical problems from the high-tech gadgetry he incorporates into his C and J framed XT500 Yamaha. When Swann accidentally goes far off course, he stumbles across a time travel experiment that utilizes "maser velocity acceleration" to send objects (in this case, a simian subject by the name of Ester G) back in time.
Swann rides through the field and gets sent back to November 5, 1875, The scientists soon realize what has happened, but Swann rides off moments before the system can return him to the present. Unaware of what has really happened to him, Swann rides off. While taking a swim break in a local spring, he runs into a gang of outlaws led by Porter Reese (Peter Coyote). Reese becomes obsessed with stealing Swann's "machine", and the outlaws pursue Swann into the small village of San Marcos, but his red suit and dirtbike scare the local Mexicans, who think he is the devil. There, he meets a beautiful woman, Claire Cygne (Belinda Bauer), who gives him a safe place to hide and severely wounds one of Reese's men (Tracey Walter). The village priest (Ed Lauter) compels them to withdraw, but Reese continues to plot the capture of Swann's dirtbike. In the village, Swann is seduced by Claire and sleeps with her, but she is later kidnapped by Reese's gang as revenge for her shooting and wounding one of them. They also manage to capture the dirtbike, leading to a series of hijinks, while Swann gets help from a posse (L. Q. Jones, Chris Mulkey) trying to capture or kill the gang. Swann manages to retrieve his dirtbike and rescue Claire, but the posse's leader is killed, and another is mortally wounded and dies later.
In a final showdown, Reese's band of outlaws faces Swann, the last survivor of the posse, and Claire atop a plateau. When a helicopter shows up (sent by the builders of the time travel experiment) to take Swann home, Reese's men run away in fear, but Reese stays behind and fires at the helicopter, killing one of the pilots. The helicopter begins spinning wildly as the surviving pilot tries to maintain control, knocking the dirtbike off the side of the plateau. Reese gets mangled by the helicopter's tail rotor, leaving only a pair of bloody boots behind. The helicopter manages to land on the plateau and extract Swann. Just as the helicopter pulls away, Claire snatches a pendant from Swann's neck that was handed down from his great-great-grandmother, who had stolen it from his great-great grandfather as a reminder of "one incredible night they had together." Swann realizes that he is his own great-great-grandfather.
Read more about this topic: Timerider: The Adventure Of Lyle Swann
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)