Directed by: The Spierig Brothers
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor
Release Date: In theatres and on VOD
Brothers Michael and Peter Spierig are best known for their less-than-admirable sci-fi attempt Daybreakers, a vampire twist that works better in theory than execution, even with Willem Dafoe and Predestination starrer Ethan Hawke. Though afforded faults of its own, Predestination is an improvement on the voice of the brothers Spierig.
Watcher beware, Predestination is convoluted with first-act details made fruitful by act three, a chapter of myriad twists and turns. M. Night Shyamalan sits in a red leather, brass-studded chair in awe, no doubt. Ethan Hawke’s Temporal Agent travels throughout time (a discovery made by the government in 1981) to stop the day’s worst criminals. After a face-altering encounter with an explosive device, Hawke gives his final go at stopping a 1970s terrorist known as the Fizzle Bomber.
Undercover, listed only as The Barkeep, Hawke meets a suspicious, brazenly deprecating man. He is credited as the Unmarried Woman, played by Sarah Snook. To give away much more is to spoil the perishable Predestination’s great favor to itself: it’s perishability. Ignorance is bliss when there’s a twist.
Hawke is just fine as always. But Snook gives the definitive Overlooked Performance. She harmonizes a complex role that threatens this pretty-to-watch time warp with campy abandon. Camp is what the Spierig brothers straddle, clumsily falling on the side of interesting. By force they raft together the circular nature of time (travel) and oft blurred lines between fate and preordination. It unravels with mediocre results, as often as they sparingly mention it.
A high production value—and giant front-stage talents—Predestination, is worth the time of sci-fi’s ardent subscribers. If you have an affinity for stories that fold over, twist after twist, you’re in for a joyride.
