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I saw some of this film several years ago (2007?). It was being shown on a TV screen behind the counter in a shop, so I heard absolutely no audio and have no idea of e.g. any of the characters' names. Here's what I could piece together of what it was all about:

  • Most of it was a western-style film, with men in cowboy hats riding around on horses, shooting at each other, and so on.
  • There were three main characters: an older man, a younger man, and a woman. The younger man is the primary character, I think the woman is his love interest, and the older man is possibly some kind of mentor or father figure.
  • The two men have a plan which involves a time machine . For some reason, I think they need to crash a train into the time machine in order to travel into the future.
  • They hijack a train by galloping up behind it on horseback, climbing along the tops of the carriages from the rear end, and pointing guns at the driver and fireman to make them jump out.
  • Meanwhile, the woman has been secretly following them. She also gallops up behind the train and climbs along it starting from the rear end.
  • The plan succeeds, and we see the younger man waking up in modern America and driving around in his truck. He goes in search of the woman, and finds her on a veranda outside another house.
  • For some reason, a scene that stuck in my mind is when the two of them are waiting at traffic lights next to another truck, both revving their engines. The lights turn green, and the other truck roars away, while the truck our heroes are in goes backwards instead.
  • Finally, right at the end of the film (I think), the older man shows up again. He'd presumably gone even further into the future, since he returned to visit the other two while riding on a brightly-coloured train with wings. He talks to them for a while and then takes off, the train zooming into the sky and disappearing.

The time travel elements should be enough to make this on-topic here. Anyone have any idea what the film was called?

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    lots of it is in back to the future 3 ... Mar 6, 2016 at 12:56
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    It's obviously Back to the Future 3, but the post title did make me think of another movie, "Source Code", which involves a guy's consciousness being repeatedly sent back in time to try and prevent a train crash. The crash triggers him back into the present several times. Mar 6, 2016 at 16:29
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    This question causes me the same kind of internal knee-jerk reaction that I imagine a lot of people feel when hearing "I've never seen Star Wars". Mar 6, 2016 at 21:57
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    @SethBattin Would it interest you to learn that I've never seen Star Wars?
    – Rand al'Thor
    Mar 6, 2016 at 22:53
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    @SethBattin what is a Star Wars?
    – user902383
    Mar 7, 2016 at 9:50

1 Answer 1

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This resembles a mixed-up rememberance of parts of Back to the Future 3.

The girl in the past (Clara Clayton) is actually the love interest of the father figure (Doctor "Doc" Emmet Brown). The one the young man (Marty mc Fly) sees in the present is his own love interest, Jennifer.

From Wikipedia:

Clara applies the emergency brake and runs back to town. She discovers Doc's model of the time machine and rides after him. Having stolen the train at gunpoint, Doc and Marty begin pushing the DeLorean along the spur line, attempting to get it up to 88 miles per hour. Clara boards the locomotive while Doc climbs towards the DeLorean.

Marty arrives on October 27, 1985, escaping the powerless DeLorean before it is destroyed by an oncoming freight train. He discovers that everything has returned to the improved timeline and finds Jennifer sleeping on her front porch. He uses the lessons he learned in 1885 from being goaded into a street race with Douglas J. Needles, avoiding a possible automobile accident.

Marty takes Jennifer to the time machine wreckage. A locomotive equipped with a flux capacitor appears, manned by Doc, Clara, and their two children Jules and Verne. [...] Doc’s train converts into an aerial craft and disappears into an unknown time.

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  • Thanks! :-D This has certainly shown up my ignorance of sci-fi films...
    – Rand al'Thor
    Mar 6, 2016 at 13:05
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    That one is so well known (especially since the future date was just a few months ago) that i just posted it as a comment, thinking you would laugh at me ^^ Mar 6, 2016 at 13:06
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    Yeah, I know something about the films, mainly thanks to this site, but never had any interest in watching them. Like I always say, I came here for the fantasy novels, not the sci-fi films! :-)
    – Rand al'Thor
    Mar 6, 2016 at 13:10
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    @randal'thor: Well... Back to the Future isn't really sci-fi. :-) Primarily comedy with very fantastical science-fictiony elements. Mar 6, 2016 at 16:45
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    @tjcrowder Almost cartoony (Doc Brown certainly is) Mar 6, 2016 at 18:06

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