Predestination
Loopier than Looper
Release Date: 5 December
15 | 95 minutes Directors: Michael and Peter Spierig Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor, Madeleine West, Christopher Kirby
This time travel tale
holds little in the way of surprises for devotees of Robert Heinlein. Based on “All You Zombies”, a 1958 short story by the Starship Troopers author, it sticks surprisingly close to the original text. The main change is that it bolts on an additional bonkers twist of its own.
For the uninitiated, however, it’s intriguingly unpredictable. Hopping between alternate reality versions of 1945, 1963, 1975 and 1985, it mostly unfolds in the ’ 70s, as a writer of confessional tales for trashy magazines relates his unbelievably tragic life story to Ethan Hawke’s bartender. Along the way we discover that he was formerly a she… and that the bartender is actually a temporal agent out to recruit him. An increasingly jaw- dropping tale of temporal paradox follows, presented with considerable noirish period style ( one other pleasing tweak is that its time machine is carried about in a violin case).
If there’s a problem, it’s that this is the sort of story which probably works better in the more abstract form of prose. When brought to life by flesh and blood actors, its perverse central premise becomes a whole lot harder to swallow – even when the performances are as strong as they are here. Still, if there are enough people out there with a superhuman ability to suspend disbelief, Predestination could well build a substantial cult following.
Before she was cast as Jane/ John, Sarah Snook endured an extensive two- to- threehour makeup test to play the male role.