Toronto After Dark: Predestination Review

Time travel is a tricky thing for a film maker, but Predestination faces the challenge head on. It is science fiction that holds to my belief of what good science fiction should be; it challenges the viewer’s moral code and gives them an alternate view of their reality. The film is by the Spierig brothers and stars Ethan Hawke, the same creative team behind Daybreakers. Hawke plays a temporal agent, a cop who stops crimes before they occur, on his final assignment to catch the one criminal to get away. The obvious difficulty with this story arc is the high potential for a paradox, a huge challenge to explain or make sense of to an audience, but Predestination faces the potential paradoxes head on and builds a better movie because of its fearlessness.

Predestination is the theological doctrine that free will is only an illusion; it states that everything that will happen has already been decided by god. The movie toys with this idea; its complex plot places Hawke’s unnamed agent in a position to exercise free will and questions whether or not he will chose to. It is easy to walk away from Predestination feeling that it took a heavy handed approach to its subject since every plot point in the story raises the question of whether or not the protagonist has control over their future. But ultimately, the movie allows for the viewer’s interpretation; we get to decide whether or not we believe he followed a certain course of action thereby deciding the validity of predestination for ourselves. That is what made this movie satisfying, not the multiple plot twists or layers of story, but the open ending that demanded interpretation.

The film’s plot is satisfyingly complex and moves from a slower narrative to a noir action scene all at once. It is in essence a series of stories told with just the right amount of action carefully placed into the narrative to keep the story moving forward. If not for the exceptionally compelling performance by Sarah Snook, the movie would be more difficult to watch. Fortunately, she is perfectly cast and mesmerizing; it is difficult to find an actor to stand against Hawke’s charisma, but Snook rises to the challenge and evokes empathy for her character. Predestination is also visually captivating. It is a mix of film noir and science fiction elements and mixes deep shadows with stark concrete and metal interiors to create a visual vocabulary all its own. The contrasts between the sets create visual interest and take the audience on a journey from a dive bar in the 70s to the futuristic temporal agency. The movie may sound reminiscent of Minority Report but feels a bit more like Looper and is a satisfying thriller. The distributor is yet to set a release date in North America, but it is sure to manifest itself, if not in theatres, then as a rental and is a must watch for fans of time travel.