No, it's not another flick with a religious focus already. It's an adaptation of the Robert Heinlein time travel short story "'--All You Zombies--'" (yes, that's how it's officially punctuated). I don't blame the studio for changing the title, partly because reaching feature length, specifically 97 minutes, required an extra plot element.
Despite being an Australian production, it's set in the U.S., primarily Cleveland and New York City, in various years between the 1940s and, I think, the '90s at latest. The secret Temporal Bureau has been attempting to prevent or reduce historical disasters, including attacks by the elusive time-traveling "Fizzle Bomber," who is set to kill 10,000 New Yorkers in '75. This alone is more than the Netflix summary will tell you, but don't get the impression that the plot is simple. It's just so full of twists that it's hard not to spoil.
After the first few brief scenes, it starts to feel like a wholly unrelated, dissimilar movie as magazine writer John (Sarah Snook) tells a barkeep (Ethan Hawke) his life story, which takes up half the runtime. Only afterward, when John learns about the possibility of undoing past pains, do we understand how it ties in with the prior moments, which are not necessarily in chronological order, depending on your time travel perspective. Indeed, if this picture achieves nothing else, it will encourage you to think about how the option of going back can warp one's outlook.
I might as well tell you one twist, as it's revealed early on and would hardly be shocking anymore: John is a transman, albeit not the usual sort. He was born "Jane" with a hermaphroditic internal structure, and after a certain surgical misfortune, the doctors thought it best to make the male side dominate, beginning without the adult patient's prior consent. If you find that hard to buy, then you're really not ready for the rest.
I can't say I particularly like John -- he's dour, rude, and often arrogant -- but he is easy to pity for all the events that left no good choices open to him. Well, the pity is mostly for his past. The older he gets, the more he appears to earn what happens to him. Part of that reportedly comes from overuse of time travel, which recruiting Agent Robertson (Noah Taylor) warns can take a toll on sanity. I'm not sure whether it affects the brain directly or just inspires the wrong thoughts after a while.
I am intrigued by the design of the portable time machine, which resembles nothing so much as a type of musical instrument case, except that what looks like a combination lock lets you set the date and hour. You never quite get used to the sensation, and the further you go at once, the harder it is on you. Traveling beyond a 53-year radius of the machine's creation is a no-go. (With an '81 invention, you'd think agents would stop the Holocaust. Maybe they did, but it's not important to the focus.)
Personally, I recognized most of the twists well before they were unambiguously spelled out. Sometimes I didn't immediately accept them: "Oh, don't tell me the filmmakers went there!" But they do ultimately interlock to make a kind of sense, however deranged, with no coincidences. Had I recalled in advance who the author was, I'd have been less surprised.
From a technical and artistic standpoint, Predestination is pretty good, the long backstory notwithstanding. The actors deliver as needed, much of the dialog comes straight from Heinlein's wit, and the cinematography fits the attitude. You just have to prepare for a mind screw, even if less random and scary than, say, Lost Highway.
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