Review of Predestination (2013) by Dustin G — 13 Jan 2016

They say there are only seven basic plots. With that in mind, you can forgive movies like Predestination for at times feeling more like a hodgepodge of its obvious influences than a beast unto itself. Right off the bat, the films atmosphere and visual aesthetic has a very Dark City vibe to it. As the plot unfolds, Memento, Back to the Future, Inception, Looper and of course Minority Report all come to mind frequently. But the same thing happens when I watch Tarantino flicks. A movie wearing its influences on its sleeve isn't necessarily a bad thing if the film uses them to bring something new and fresh of its own to the table. And Predestination does this in spades.

Truly a film that is hard to sum up in a few short sentences, or even a few short paragraphs, the best I can do is to call it a time travel, coming of age, film noir detective story with no shortage of existentialism thrown in for good measure.

Ethan Hawke plays a man who is a sort of time travelling crime prevention CIA agent who must find a terrorist in 1970's New York City known as 'the fizzle bomber' who is on a bomb happy rampage which has the city in a perpetual state of anxiety. As he is on the hunt, he comes across a man in a bar who tells him an amazing and hard to believe story which makes him think that this man would be perfect for the agency.

That only scratches the surface of the plot though and the film uses its time jumping devices, its alternate universe setting (time travel is invented in the 80's on Predestination's earth) and its unique (to say the least) character arcs to tell a story which is both compulsively enjoyable and somewhat baffling the first time around. Truly this is a film which benefits from multiple viewings. It ties itself up in the end in a brave and exciting way though and leaves a pleasant aftertaste.