Review of Life Tracker (2013) by Ron L — 08 Oct 2013

So let's say you like science-fiction.... let's say you like science-fiction that can help create a plausible alternative reality. Let's say you like science fiction that can create plausible alternative realities but also tell a very human story about people, and not just about special effects? This movie is well-done.

Sure, there might be some unanswered or scientifically-challenged concepts in the movie. What sci-fi film doesn't haven those? But this movie creates a cohesive vision for how new but currently existing technologies, like DNA analysis, are posing confounding philosophical questions about our fates and our futures.

The human story told here was captivating, as the characters in the film are increasingly confronted with unpleasant paradoxes regarding their knowledge of "future possibilities". The movie doesn't present some frenetic sequence of apocalypse, it rather presents humanity (or at least the very normal characters in the film) as sort of quietly marching towards their fate.

The future is foretold, but they cling to whatever semblance of "control" over their fates that they can. This leaves the audience in total suspense, about whether the future is a self-fulfilling prophecy, one in which we arrive at the conclusion not via one path, but through the sum of infinite decisions that inexorably deposit us in the same place.