Ratings: 8.8/10
Film class: B
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Predestination looks to be a low budget thriller on time travel, which takes place in an alternate reality where a few chosen elites are able to go back in time to prevent crimes from happening. It sounds similar to Minority Report, however with a less impressive cast (no A-listers), CG, and publicity. While it's not blockbuster material, its strong script and impressive acting wowed me, deserving of what I would call, yet another hidden gem.
It's not too intellectually heavy on surface level, but it does bruise your brain a bit. The multiple twists are guaranteed to deliver some of the most memorable in cinematic history. Were the twists important? Yes, so much so that my advice would be to stop reading now and go watch it with an open mind. The less you know, the better the experience will be for you. It's relatively dialogue heavy, but rest assured sitting through the entire movie will be well worth it.
*ultimate spoilers ahead, do not read further if you haven't reached predestination* So did the plot twists make sense? Or did they open bigger loop holes? Well, the only feedback I received from my movie buddy, none other than my wife, was that the physical built of both leads were different. That's for the absolute critics, in a way, it didn't bother me that much.
1st major twist: The female protagonist was forced to undergo sex change due to her pregnancy and was given a chance to go back in time to kill the man who impregnated her. She went back, and realized that the "man" her previous self met was actually her present self. So it meant she had sex with herself. And did she change the course of history? Nope. So yeah, it makes sense cos their relationships just went round in a loop. And was it actually possible to have sex with yourself and have a baby after? Well the movie did explain why (she has two full sets of sex organs in her body) and it also did good subtle explanations like she, who after changing into a man said in a bar encounter with the male protagonist, Ethan Hawke that "she-he" was no longer shooting blanks. The only convenient excuse of an explanation was how she was forced to undergo a sex change as a result of her pregnancy. If both sex organs had indeed been growing symbiotically until then, how does a pregnancy force the female sex organs to lose its dominance and ends up being life threatening instead?
2nd major twist: The elusive villain, the "The Fizzle Bomber", was actually Ethan Hawke himself, his future self. Was it possible? Yeah, it would seem so, because his time travelling briefcase failed to decommission him, meaning he was officially off-the-grid but his device was still working. Which also meant he was able to go back in time to stop himself from stopping himself... (Hope that doesn't confuse you) ie. That's why he's always a step ahead of his past self. But the ending did show that he was able to finally shoot his future self. Which kinda didn't mean he wouldn't exist (the time traveller's grandfather paradox, that if you went back in time to kill your grandfather and succeed, you wouldn't even have existed in the first place to do that). Since he killed his future self, in who knows how many loops he has been through, it only meant the fizzle bomber wouldn't exist in the new reality. His past self would still have existed and perhaps for some critics you might argue that he wouldn't have existed for that purpose of going in loops to finally kill himself, that explanation is good enough for me. Perhaps it just meant a different alternate reality would happen, making this movie irrelevant, and who knows, perhaps a sequel might pop up something in the near future? And if he hadn't killed his future self, the "Fizzle Bomber", it would mean he would become the bomber in the future, and the loop resets itself. Makes sense to me.
And I liked this twist because in its own twisted sense, the "Fizzle Bomber" has his reasons for turning out the way he is. The "greater good", "thin line between right and wrong" scenario...
3rd major twist: The female protagonist turned out to be Ethan Hawke himself after she-he was disfigured during a failed attempt to stop the "Fizzle Bomber", who by know you know, is himself. So can the same person give birth to himself, so that he can impregnate himself, to hunt himself down, to kill himself? While its a very cool twist, it's the most uncredible. Forcefully, it might make some sense, about his abnormaly, as to why he has 2 sets of sex organs in him. But this twist just makes the "grandfather paradox" sounds like child's play. He went back to the past to "make himself", and the future to "kill himself", there's just so many variables I don't know where to start. It's worst than a snake biting its own tail (an apt analogy used in the movie), it's like an invisible snake biting its own tail. There's no way you can even verify the existence of the snake...
As I've always said, Sci-Fi thrillers on time travelling will never be perfect. It makes "Looper" looks so bad, and is on par with "Minority Report", but because it's able to achieve some awesomeness with a much lower budget, it has topped one of the most tricky Sci-Fi genres to tackle till date.
Before I end off, there's a particular scene which I thought should deserve mention. There's a strong hint during the bar scene when she-he was speaking to Ethan Hawke, about his ideology and impression of the "Fizzle Bomber", that perhaps the bomber was doing the world a favor. I suspected then that she-he was the bomber, which turned out to be true, just that I didn't expect them to be all the same person. It's an interesting point. Because think of his life as 5 major points - 1 (baby-child), 2 (woman), 3 (she-he), 4 (Ethan Hawke), 5 (Fizzle bomber). For the bar scene, 3 and 4 were together. But 3 was thinking more like 5, because of the circumstances he was put through, and 4 was the only "altruistic" one. It's almost like a schizo scenario, how certain circumstances will change the same person into a different person and in a way a true reflection of life. We're never the same person throughout our life, that's why when we take personality tests, the results may change in time, depending on the phases in our lives. Does it mean deep down Ethan Hawke was more "psychotic" than normal? The "majority" doesn't necessarily apply here because in every version of himself, his purpose was practical, logical, "right".
Predestination hits the homerun with the deeply memorable quotes, the finesse in scripting and execution, and the mind expanding plot twists. If this movie doesn't get you "there", I don't know what else will.
(Note: An interesting afterthought I had was that the person who actually recruited she-he was actually his future self. So if he hadn't done that, that means the "Fizzle Bomber" wouldn't have existed. Would that bring the "grandfather's paradox" in play then? Perhaps the director's way of answering this question was by answering with another "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?", a question posed by the lead to himself. And the answer was (thankfully there was an answer), the rooster. As absurd as it sounded then, during the movie, it might make sense now. I don't know what the director (who was also the scriptwriter) had in mind when he provided that answer, but I can think of two reasons for that.
The first, was because the rooster referred to Ethan Hawke, or perhaps she-he. Because the rooster's male, so either Ethan Hawke for recruiting himself so that a certain future could be set in play, or for she-he to join this special organization so that he could ultimately become the "Fizzle Bomber", which also meant setting that same future in play. If that's true, perhaps what the director meant, was that we have been looking at this question the wrong way. It's not a matter of the start or the end, but the middle. The middle sets the start and end in play. Absurd? Perhaps, but an interesting viewpoint to consider.
The second possibility, was that the rooster (thanks to the limited male cast making it easier to pinpoint the "cause") refers to Ethan Hawke's boss, for recruiting him. But it's weird, because by right, Ethan Hawke recruited himself. But the movie did show she-he meeting his boss eventually. Perhaps there's an indirect reference to "God". That the boss was like "God", and he was the one who actually set everything in motion. Similar concept as the first point, that things started in the middle, not the start or end as logic would have misled us to restrict ourselves mentally.
But whatever the "real" answer the director had in mind, it's sure something fun to ponder on...)
