PREDESTINATION

 

3.5 (out of 5)

 

Twin co-writers/co-directors/co-producers/et cetera Michael and Peter Spierig follow their vampire-virus actioner Daybreakers with this seriously ambitious filming of Robert Heinlein’s 1958 short story All You Zombies (and yes, it looks like the title was changed to avoid confusion with that one hit wonder from those awesome ‘80s).

A plot that makes even mind-boggingly paradoxical time-travel outings like Primer look easy has a ‘Temporal Agent’ (Ethan Hawke from Daybreakers) moving through key chronological periods and haunted by the handiwork of mysterious terrorist the ‘Fizzle Bomber’. Working for a while as a bartender in the ‘70s, he strikes up a conversation one night with Jane (not-quite-unknown Sarah Snook), who relates a story about her ‘foundling’ status, her orphanage upbringing, her indeterminate sexuality and more. This first hour features some of the Spierigs’ best writing and most assured direction yet (a long way from their début Undead), but then the time-travel material properly kicks in, as the Agent moves through time easily by way of what looks like a violin case. It’s apparently his last assignment, according to Mr Robertson (Noah Taylor), and what happens from hereon is almost impossible to explain without giving the game away – or sounding like gibberish.

With a fine turn by Hawke and an extraordinarily daring one by Snook, whose non-starriness works well as you wonder just who he/she is right from the word go, this shot-in-Melbourne (but set in New York and Cleveland) brain-bender is one of the year’s best science fiction films. But hey, you knew I was going to say that, as we’ve been here before…