Predestination

The Spierig brothers have deftly fashioned an unpredictable thrill ride, and the joy is to fit together all its puzzle pieces.

A funny, affecting, twisted tale, which demands you pay close attention to every throwaway detail.

Predestination is science fiction for a thoughtful crowd. This isn't an action oriented film nor should it be mistaken for a blockbuster.

Does it all add up? Maybe, if you follow the letter of narrative law. It's certainly imaginative, with high-minded ideas, but Hawke and Snook are what keep it grounded in truth.

The movie may not have quite the mind-bending wallop of “Inception,” but Predestination is about something deeper than fantasy.

There’s a clarity to Snook’s emotional journey that’s absent from the rest of the film—a fact that’s partly deliberate, since Heinlein and the Spierigs mean to dive into the soup. But amid the murky genre experimentation, it’s a beacon of truth.

There are so many interesting ideas and concepts that could have been spun from this framework. Instead, it's the work of a bunch of filmmakers who seemingly wanted to offer up a WTF-worthy twist ending and tried to reverse engineer a movie from it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Predestination is a film for those who like to reflect on what time travel implies and on what it might mean to exist within time on a macroscopic scale. Parmenides would probably have appreciated the film’s ending, after all, he maintained that “Being is and cannot not be.” The film’s greatest strength undoubtedly lies in the theme it explores and, more broadly, in its narrative framework and overall structure. It is also commendable that the film brings the intersex experience to the big screen, together with the two-sided nature of being different, on the one hand, difference can become the source of innovative solutions, on the other, it can turn a person into an outlier to be isolated, primarily because of the degree of incomprehension generated by their existential dissimilarity. As for the rest, the directorial choices, screenplay, production design, cinematography and special effects are all more than adequate, although none of them is especially memorable. The cast is solid overall, Ethan Hawke gives a fairly convincing performance, while Sarah Snook is somewhat less persuasive in the role of the intersex character. Some of the ideas introduced by the story could have been developed more thoroughly and greater detail could have been provided regarding certain elements that appear in the film but are ultimately left somewhat unexplored. Nevertheless, it is certainly an interesting work, capable of stimulating reflection and debate among viewers.

A Guy Walks Into A Bar. Predestination Spierig Brothers are creating havoc on screen as far as they are teasing us with the romance. And there is a whole lot of electric charge between Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook. So innocently sinister is their love, that it describes the entire film within that one conversation. To be fair that one conversation takes most of the time, in fact the first half, but this has always been Hawke's forte. There is no one that can talk like him on screen. He looks at her with an attractive fire in his eyes and you sink deep in the film. The Spierig Brother, screenwriters and directors, are playing a safe game by doing so, since the rest of the film is a basic time jump from one place to another, the first half is soothingly calm and harrowing equally. Sarah Snook that goes through a physical transformation is exceptionally good in her portrayal to a degree that she challenges Hawke blatantly when they go head to head in a bar. There aren't any big themes explored in here, just so that if you are expecting, which works surprisingly in its favor. As we have experienced before too, in order to do so, it can come off as a big misconstrued hotchpotch that dulls our palette. It promises an engaging time travelling adventure and that's what this thrilling ride offers, strong in its believable mythology, it hits hard and fast. This loopity-loop screenplay obviously comes handy with a hindrance in the structure that is ironically its most valuable asset in order to reboot one's mindset, a refreshing take on the whole time travelling religioso. Predestination is destined to stay within its barred sharp vision that may fail to cut across the genre, but the room has enough energy to feed on textbook thrills.

This movie takes the worst aspect of the time travel concept, namely paradox's and actually tries to build its plot around that. Its basically going, see this, this is impossible, whoooah mindblown, see how deep we are. This movie is for idiots who think logic is some foreign esoteric concept. This movie literally invalidates itself.

If there was ever a movie that went out to a public park and removed its trousers then took a long deep **** on an idea (such as time travel) that people love and believe in, then is the movie is the one. I've never felt disgusted after watching a film than i felt with this one, if i was there in the premier i would have puked!. Unbelieveable!