PIECING together Predestination is a bit like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. No sooner have you made sense of one piece of the story than you realise that assorted other elements have only grown more muddled. The time-hopping crime thriller is tailor-made for our message-board times, because watching the movie is a jumping-off point for further discussion and, undoubtedly, debate.

Whether sci-fi aficionados will balk at the series of twists or embrace the convoluted timeline, Predestination proves to be a thrilling entertainment for the rest of us, who may not ruminate as much about time-travel paradoxes. That’s not, however, for the reasons you might think; the movie is surprisingly light on action.

It’s best to go into the movie knowing as little as possible, but the gist is that Ethan Hawke plays a “temporal agent” who zips back in history to prevent crimes before they happen. He hasn’t had much luck catching a notorious terrorist known as the Fizzle Bomber, however. His boss gives him one more shot, so off the agent goes to the year 1970, five years before the bomber’s biggest massacre.

Given what we know, it seems like a planned event when our nameless hero, pretending to be a bartender, strikes up a conversation with a man named John in a New York watering hole. John ends up telling this stranger his life story, which unfolds in flashbacks. It turns out that John was actually born Jane, in the 1940s, and raised in an orphanage. She was a tomboy who loved to fight, but also a straight-A student who embarked on an exciting career path before falling into a star-crossed romantic relationship with someone who plays a significant role in her gender-bending destiny. Both Jane and John are played by talented Australian up-and-comer Sarah Snook.

John’s coming-of-age narrative is fairly run-of-the-mill next to the time-travelling manhunt that surrounds it, but the character’s history is entirely captivating — and arguably the most rewarding aspect of the movie. Snook has a commanding presence, and the bittersweet tale John tells lends the drama unexpected emotional weight.

The movie is based on All You Zombies, a short story by Robert A. Heinlein that has been capably ushered onto the screen, with a few additional threads, by brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, who share writing and directing duties.

Once the movie shifts gears, sending the bartender and John back to the 1960s, things get weird, and not always in a good way. By the time the final minutes roll around, the requisite big reveals are both bizarre and predictable, even if they don’t make complete sense at first (or ever). But seeing what’s coming doesn’t blunt the overall impact of the story. The movie may not have quite the mind-bending wallop of Inception, but Predestination is about something deeper than fantasy.

By arrangement with The Washington Post

Published in Dawn January 11th , 2014

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