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Predestination (The Spierig Brothers)
Don't try and 'figure out' this film
The Spierig brothers first came onto the scene with a film entirely funded by themselves and their friends. This was the Australian horror zombie fest Undead. While the film had an annoying lead character and some tone & pacing issues, it was pretty clear that these guys had some serious talent. I expected big things from them in the future and 6 years later they came back with the genre flick, Daybreakers. Daybreakers came just after the sexy leading man vampire of film (Twilight) and television (The Vampire Diaries). So it was nice to see the gruesome, bloody, ugly creatures that they are come about in this film, which has an interesting enough premise to warrant a watch. Well, almost another 6 years later, the brother are at it again, with Ethan Hawke at their side for the second time, with their sci/fi time travel picture; Predestination.
Hawke plays a temporal agent, a man with the task of going through time to try and stop catastrophes before they happen. He's tracking down a man known as 'The Fizzle Bomber', responsible for the death of thousands of people in more than a dozen bombings. His next bombing will apparently kill over 10,000 people in New York. If this sounds similar, it's because this story has been done to death in time travel films. Someone has to go back, multiple times, to try and stop a bad guy from doing a bad thing; Source Code, Terminator, every other time travel film. Now while the premise of the film seems redundant, everything else about the film is not. I promise you, you've never seen anything like this film before.
I won't go into detail about the story plots of the film, anything I say will ruin the twists and turns the film throws at you. Yet the one fundamental flaw the film has is the fact that it is a time travel film. People will go into this film, I know I did, with theories about this and that, way before there are any hints of it in the film. Predestination suffers from this and it doesn't help that the Spierig brothers drop pretty blatant clues in the first act. I caught them pretty clearly, which made me guess certain things...but here's the weird part; even though guesses came true, I still sat there dumbfounded at what I was watching. I love time travel films. I love trying to pick apart things about them after they've set up their own rules. I had fun with this one.
Hawke is pretty great here, he gets the opportunity to have some fun in certain scenes and lead with some heavy drama in others. The guy is hard to peg, he certainly does love his genre films though. Even though he hasn't done anything to really wow me yet, I find his films to be entertaining enough and a lot of it has to do with his abilities on the screen. Yet the real standout here is the fresh faced Sarah Snook, who undoubtedly has the hardest task here. The backstory behind her character is tragic, weird, gross, mysterious...she pulls all of this off nicely and I look forward to seeing more of her work.
Well shot, but from my experience that is to be expected. The film's premise would make you believe that the film has a lot of action, chase sequences and shootouts. Yet there is hardly a whisper of that. This is a deliberately slow paced film, yet it never drags. Despite the film being about Hawke pursuing a bomber, the brothers are not interested in that aspect. They would rather have the film pursue other means and themes, such as love, identity and purpose. Predestination wraps itself in all of this and more.
I don't expect this film to make a big splash anywhere, yet I can tell it will have a cult following. I enjoyed the film, I found myself coming up with some of the craziest scenarios that could happen and smiled when most of them were right on the nose. Predestination is a fun, stylized science fiction film and should be seen by more people. Check it out.
Also, word to the wise. Don't try and 'figure out' this film. Once you start to think about the hows, the whys, the whos....you'll hurt your brain with the paradoxes. But Damn....
Don't try and 'figure out' this film
The Spierig brothers first came onto the scene with a film entirely funded by themselves and their friends. This was the Australian horror zombie fest Undead. While the film had an annoying lead character and some tone & pacing issues, it was pretty clear that these guys had some serious talent. I expected big things from them in the future and 6 years later they came back with the genre flick, Daybreakers. Daybreakers came just after the sexy leading man vampire of film (Twilight) and television (The Vampire Diaries). So it was nice to see the gruesome, bloody, ugly creatures that they are come about in this film, which has an interesting enough premise to warrant a watch. Well, almost another 6 years later, the brother are at it again, with Ethan Hawke at their side for the second time, with their sci/fi time travel picture; Predestination.
Hawke plays a temporal agent, a man with the task of going through time to try and stop catastrophes before they happen. He's tracking down a man known as 'The Fizzle Bomber', responsible for the death of thousands of people in more than a dozen bombings. His next bombing will apparently kill over 10,000 people in New York. If this sounds similar, it's because this story has been done to death in time travel films. Someone has to go back, multiple times, to try and stop a bad guy from doing a bad thing; Source Code, Terminator, every other time travel film. Now while the premise of the film seems redundant, everything else about the film is not. I promise you, you've never seen anything like this film before.
I won't go into detail about the story plots of the film, anything I say will ruin the twists and turns the film throws at you. Yet the one fundamental flaw the film has is the fact that it is a time travel film. People will go into this film, I know I did, with theories about this and that, way before there are any hints of it in the film. Predestination suffers from this and it doesn't help that the Spierig brothers drop pretty blatant clues in the first act. I caught them pretty clearly, which made me guess certain things...but here's the weird part; even though guesses came true, I still sat there dumbfounded at what I was watching. I love time travel films. I love trying to pick apart things about them after they've set up their own rules. I had fun with this one.
Hawke is pretty great here, he gets the opportunity to have some fun in certain scenes and lead with some heavy drama in others. The guy is hard to peg, he certainly does love his genre films though. Even though he hasn't done anything to really wow me yet, I find his films to be entertaining enough and a lot of it has to do with his abilities on the screen. Yet the real standout here is the fresh faced Sarah Snook, who undoubtedly has the hardest task here. The backstory behind her character is tragic, weird, gross, mysterious...she pulls all of this off nicely and I look forward to seeing more of her work.
Well shot, but from my experience that is to be expected. The film's premise would make you believe that the film has a lot of action, chase sequences and shootouts. Yet there is hardly a whisper of that. This is a deliberately slow paced film, yet it never drags. Despite the film being about Hawke pursuing a bomber, the brothers are not interested in that aspect. They would rather have the film pursue other means and themes, such as love, identity and purpose. Predestination wraps itself in all of this and more.
I don't expect this film to make a big splash anywhere, yet I can tell it will have a cult following. I enjoyed the film, I found myself coming up with some of the craziest scenarios that could happen and smiled when most of them were right on the nose. Predestination is a fun, stylized science fiction film and should be seen by more people. Check it out.
Also, word to the wise. Don't try and 'figure out' this film. Once you start to think about the hows, the whys, the whos....you'll hurt your brain with the paradoxes. But Damn....