Peter Spierig
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Full of temporal double and triple entendres, combining the themes of William Blake's "The Mental Traveler" and Robert Zemeckis's "Back to the Future," "Predestination" is time well spent.
The best ones — courtesy of Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling and James Cameron, and well as “12 Monkeys,” various “Star Trek” plots, the “Planet of the Apes” canon and the peerless “Back to the Future” trilogy — are worth returning to again and again.
A surprisingly faithful adaptation of a 1958 Robert Heinlein short story, Predestination gets tangled in many of the same logic loops and paradoxes that any piece of time travel fiction – Terminator, Looper, even Back to the Future included – must contend with.
Many of the best sci-fi films of late ( Looper , Source Code ) have used the time-travel concept alongside ethically rich themes.
The paradoxical dilemmas and repercussions recall the likes of Looper, The Terminator and Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who adventure 'The Day of the Daleks'.
At a glance, it looks like a mélange of time-travel touchstones—a dash of Looper , a smidgeon of “La Jetée,” even a bit of the farcical Back To The Future II .
An inscrutable sci-fi thriller recalling "Looper," "Predestination" features Ethan Hawke as a time-traveling agent on a mission to intercept a notorious serial bomber.
Those who were floored by "Looper" need to check this out - it's a far better film, despite a lower budget look and features a breakout performance from Sarah Snook ("Jessabelle") who's like a cross between Tatiana Maslany and Dane DeHaan in this role.
At a glance, it looks like a mélange of time-travel touchstones—a dash of Looper , a smidgeon of “La Jetée,” even a bit of the farcical Back To The Future II .
All of which is more or less faithful to Heinlein's story, which preceded even Chris Marker's "La Jetée" (1962) as an early version of the now familiar convention of time-travelers on a mission to undo past catastrophes.
(There may be no Fizzle Bomber in the story but there is mention of a Fizzle War.) Heinlein’s brief, brilliant fantasy came out three years before Chris Marker’s short, La Jetée .
A bit. Back to the Future , Looper , Primer , Edge of Tomorrow , 12 Monkeys (and La Jetee).
It's a mystery with romance, time travel and biological experiments and the Spierigs tell it in ways that recall film noir with a dash of Kubrick by way of "The Terminator."
The paradoxical dilemmas and repercussions recall the likes of Looper, The Terminator and Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who adventure 'The Day of the Daleks'.
Many of the best sci-fi films of late ( Looper , Source Code ) have used the time-travel concept alongside ethically rich themes.
We’ve seen far more variations of this story than most of us can recall, from “Timecop” and “Source Code” to “Deja Vu.”
Yes, there are glimpses of “Source Code” and “Minority Report,” but this is a fully realized world with textures that give it a vibrant stamp.
Like the time travel gems “Looper,” “Source Code” and “Primer,” “Predestination” succeeds partially because its actors are invested in it, helping us buy into the wild premise.
This is a common conceit in science fiction, with the idea being tried on by Steven Spielberg who adapted Philip K. Dick for 2002’s “Minority Report.”
If that calls to mind 2002’s “Minority Report,” the film does boast a similar late-’50s provenance, adapted from a short story by Robert Heinlein (the other’s author was Philip K. Dick).
Yes, there are glimpses of “Source Code” and “Minority Report,” but this is a fully realized world with textures that give it a vibrant stamp.
It's amusing how a film about time travel and "Minority Report" pre-cognition more or less ignores those notions — but, then, it winds up being about so much more.
As time shifting police movies go (“Time Cop,” “Looper,” “ Minority Report “), “Predestination” takes a noirish approach, as a low key mood piece with characters who will cause fits for any genealogist trying to plot their family tree.
Not that we realise this when the feature begins, what with its Minority Report -recalling premise.
Predestination is, to begin with, a film by Australian filmmaking brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, whose last film, 2009's "what if?" vampire story Daybreakers , felt like a peerless example of a once-in-a-lifetime concept that simply didn't have enough done with it in the execution.
The direction by the Spierig brothers is notably understated, more so than their previous effort Daybreakers, which serves as a perfect complement to the high concept subject matter.
Over the years, Hawke (who also starred in the Spierig Brothers’ “Daybreakers”) has become the sort of actor whose adventurous choice of material inspires confidence more often than not, and he makes an ideal guide to the mysteries on offer here.
Just as the Spierigs’ last film, 2010’s Daybreakers, didn’t entirely get the most out of its hooky premise of a vampire-dominated future facing a shortage of human blood, Predestination slightly underserves Heinlein’s knotty tale of a temporal agent seeking to halt an elusive mass murderer; the film version turns the story into a neo-noir that’s too thick with borrowed attitude.
Written and directed by Peter and Michael Spierig, who gave us the 2010 vampire-plague movie Daybreakers , it’s a thoughtful, ambitious adaptation, whose pieces finally lock into place with a satisfying, if not entirely unexpected click.
It’s a stylish, mind-bending, sci-fi noir thriller starring Ethan Hawke (who starred in “Daybreakers”(2009), a spiffy sci-fi-horror zombie flick from the same directors, the identical twins Michael and Peter Spierig).
There’s a boom, a mess of melting flesh and, shortly thereafter, the temporal agent is in bed with his face wrapped in bandages, much like Humphrey Bogart’s in the 1947 noir “Dark Passage.”
They’re operating in a mode that might fairly be described as budget Nolan, with Peter himself composing an urgent, imitation-Hans Zimmer score and the two filmmakers repurposing some famous sci-fi quotes as Memento-lite reminders.
In manner not unlike that employed in “Go” (1999), “Hero” (2002), and “Predestination” (2014)—all excellent movies—“The Last Duel” borrows a great deal structurally from the 1950 Akira Kurosawa masterpiece “Rashomon.”
Although Snook is not 100 percent convincing as a full-grown male—she looks like the young Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy’s Life (92)—her eloquence as a performer, and the Spierigs’ empathy and cleverness, make you eager to suspend disbelief.
Using a slick, contemporary visual idiom, they unveiled their vampire world as vividly as F.W. Murnau did Transylvania in Nosferatu , even if Daybreakers eventually ran out of originality and élan.
Beefing up Heinlein’s busy, circular narrative to feature length, writer-directors Michael and Peter Spierig invent an action-movie dimension—a bomb threat that the hero repeatedly travels through time to confront, à la Denzel Washington in Tony Scott’s great Déjà Vu .
Brothers who team up as moviemakers are often organic virtuosos—think the Tavianis in The Night of the Shooting Stars and Kaos , the Coens in No Country for Old Men and Inside Llewyn Davis , or, in a pop, sci-fi/fantasy vein, the Wachowskis in The Matrix.
They are fans of Wachowski siblings, praising The Matrix trilogy as one of the greatest sci-fi trilogies ever and naming Bound as one of their favourite films.
But it’s a special triumph for Sarah Snook, a little-known Australian actress whose turn should do for her career what Edward Norton’s curiously similar one in “Primal Fear” did for his.
The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982)
Directed by Vittorio Taviani
influenced Predestination (2014)
Brothers who team up as moviemakers are often organic virtuosos—think the Tavianis in The Night of the Shooting Stars and Kaos , the Coens in No Country for Old Men and Inside Llewyn Davis , or, in a pop, sci-fi/fantasy vein, the Wachowskis in The Matrix.
Without those chaotic opening moments that signpost Predestination as a time travel movie, it would probably have felt like a rehash of Tarantino/Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).
The best ones — courtesy of Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling and James Cameron, and well as “12 Monkeys,” various “Star Trek” plots, the “Planet of the Apes” canon and the peerless “Back to the Future” trilogy — are worth returning to again and again.
This intriguing and well-acted gender-bending story occasionally feels like The Crying Game meets Looper.
Like 2004’s The Butterfly Effect, about a man (played by Ashton Kutcher) who whizzes around alternate universes whenever he opens his diary and subsequently creates a horrible mess to deal with, the excitement in Predestination often arises from direct exchanges between characters whose relationships are complicated by the time travel traffic around them.