Based on a 1959 SF short story by Robert Heinlein titled "All You Zombies", the film introduces us to an alternate world and a government agent attempting to stop an infamous terrorist dubbed the "Fizzle Bomber" (due to the slow fuses he uses) from detonating a bomb. In the struggle the agent is seriously injured but manages to escape thanks to the help of an unseen third person - and vanishes. Awakening in hospital in 1992, the agent (Ethan Hawke) discovers that he had to undergo reconstructive surgery to save his face and throat. We also learn that he works for the top-secret Temporal Bureau, which uses time travel to prevent brutal crimes. Once healed, the agent is given one final mission - stop the Fizzle Bomber once and for all and thwart his greatest crime, the massive explosion in New York in 1975 which killed over 11,000 innocent people.
Using his 'coordinate transformer field kit' (a fancy name for a time machine) the agent travels back to 1970 and starts working undercover as a bartender in New York. He strikes up a conversation with a slightly androgynous looking customer who reveals that he writes 'true confession' articles for magazines under the pseudonym "The Unmarried Mother". The writer (Sarah Snook) bets the agent a bottle of alcohol that his life story will completely shock him - a story that begins in 1945, when *she* was left on the steps or an orphanage.
And that's just the beginning...
The problem is, this is a plot so full of head-spinning twists and unexpected developments that yet again I can't go any further into the details without wandering into huge spoiler territory - although with a title like "Predestination" you can probably guess that it's not going to be straightforward. While it's true that this is a film about time travel and all its complications, it's also a story of love, loss, gender, acceptance and intertwining destinies with doses of black humour. Trust me, the less you know when you settle down to watch, the better. It's the kind of movie where you have to concentrate all the way through - not because it's confusing - but because every seemingly throwaway detail is important and will reward your attention. When I wrote about "Frequencies" a while back, I mentioned how certain points in the film will make you reassess what has gone before, and it's a similar thing here. The ending in particular. You'll want to figure out where is it going and will be inspired to go back and watch it again to catch all the things you missed the first time.
At its core, "Predestination" utterly depends on the convincing central performances of Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook. She in particularly has to do much of the heavy lifting and pulls off a fantastic subtle performance in a role that might make other actors think twice about accepting. Stylistically it's not a big showy effects laden film, despite the complicated concepts. We jump backwards and forwards across the decades and intelligent costume and production design helps evoke the feel of the various eras. The time travel machine is brilliant in its simplicity – a violin case where the movement of the numbers and letters of the locks determines the date to which one will travel. It's a mechanism to advance the plot, not the McGuffin around which everything revolves.
I'd never read the Heinlein short story, so had no preconceptions going in about the films success or failure as a faithful adaptation. In fact I think I'd only read one less-than-glowing review. But the premise piqued my interest enough to seek out a copy - and I am definitely glad I made the effort. Yes there may be one too many twists - and yes if you have any knowledge of time travel stories you may see some of them coming, but if you are a fan of intelligent SF movies then you will not be disappointed.
Next time, I'm going to pick a film I can talk properly about !
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