Predestination
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor
A time-travelling detective (Hawke) hunts a terrorist responsible for future atrocities. To this end, he meets a man in bar and hears his tragic life story. He recruits the man, promising him revenge on the person who wronged him. A person who could well be the terrorist… Based on Robert Heinlein’s 1958 short story ‘All You Zombies’, which is nothing to do with zombies, everything to do with complex time paradoxes. Heinlein’s work had yet to be really explored by Hollywood in the way, say, Philip K. Dick’s has, and he’s got plenty of material. Ethan Hawke reteams here with the directors of ‘Daybreakers’. ‘Predestination’ is a well made, uniquely structured mind-bender with terrific performances, particularly relative newcomer Sarah Snook who should have been Oscar-nominated. It lacks a visually explosive finish (the low budget holds it back a little now and then), but it’s such a clever story, one that conjures a deep emotional investment, that it doesn’t matter.