Predestination

Based on Robert Heinlein’s All You Zombies, Predestination follows Ethan Hawke’s time-traveling temporal agent as he sets out to stop a notorious (and mysterious) figure known only as the Fizzle Bomber. There’s much, much more to the film than that, however, and filmmakers Michael and Peter Spiereg use the basic plot as a springboard for a convoluted and confusing sci-fi drama – with the movie’s oddball atmosphere ultimately holding the viewer at arms length from start to finish. It doesn’t help, certainly, that the majority of Predestination‘s first half is devoted to a long and seemingly pointless flashback into the adolescence of Sarah Snook’s unnamed character, with this portion of the proceedings, though sporadically intriguing, proving a test to the viewer’s patience and forcing one to wonder if the Spierig brothers have a concrete destination in mind. And although the pieces do eventually fall into place, Predestination isn’t quite able to recover from the erratically-paced and momentum-killing first half – which does ensure that it becomes more and more difficult to care as the revelations come fast and furious in the film’s climactic stretch. The interesting yet fairly nonsensical conclusion confirms the movie’s place as an ambitious failure, and it’s finally clear that Heinlein’s notoriously difficult short story just isn’t feature-length film material.

** out of ****