It all starts with a mysterious character setting what looks like a timer, only for something quite unexpected to happen and for that perpetrator to disappear. What's going on? Well, we meet the "Barkeep" (Ethan Hawke) who is the ultimate in crime prevention agents. He uses the temporal vortex to travel back and forth through time trying to identify those who commit heinous crimes and either talk them out of it, or just plan thwart their plans. He's been doing this for quite a while thus far, but his final mission might prove to be his most difficult. There's just one criminal who has continually eluded him and it's the "Unmarried Mother" (Sarah Snook) that he has to ensnare. Now it does take it's time to get going, but it resists the temptation to use it's time travelling theme to bombard us with different scenarios and timelines and gradually focuses us on quite a characterful study of hunter and quarry with lots of probing dialogue. The effectively intimate location provided by his bar - a sort of "in vino veritas" state of affairs works well, too. What's equally clear around half way in that, well, nothing is at all clear. The characterisations blur, the events blur - and that's not the whisky. The plot interweaves their respective chronologies in such a deliberately confusing fashion as to make it impossible to readily discern just who is who or what is what, though at least that does explain why this individual has proven to difficult for "Barkeep" to apprehend over the aeons. It has a very simple, industrial, feel to it and though the visuals are quite potent they don't overwhelm the personalities and both Hawke and an impressive Snook deliver a story that I found myself caring about. If you need your cinema to be structured with beginning, middle and end then this probably isn't for you, but if you can let it wash over you then it's quite an intriguing watch.

This movie is quite beautiful to look at, especially the opening sequence, with a very noir aesthetic which really grabbed my attention. The huge exposition dump in the bar early on utterly kills the pace the beginning sets you up to expect. But by the end of the movie, it's obvious that couldn't be avoided. A bit of a mind-bender, and although a little predictable very imaginative and absorbing.

Predestination foreordained its paradoxical nature and exploited it with individuality. “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?”. An evolutionary question, now the setup for many punchlines, that has transcended time itself. The causality dilemma that considers both cause and effect. Infinite regression. Unsolvable. What really shapes a person’s biological anatomy or their metaphorical soul? Evolutionary diversity at birth or the nurturing of our surrounding environment? The aforementioned philosophical paradox is one which The Spierig Brothers held closely to the central plot that, on the surface may befuddle even the most avid sci-fi viewers, but dig somewhat deeper and find that the temporal trajectory is bursting with thematic representation. A time traveller is sent back to 1970s New York to prevent a terrorist, known only as the “Fizzle Bomber”, from murdering thousands. To mention certain plot strands, even touching upon their delicate coating, would be to spoil this ingeniously creative film. Therefore, as a precaution, I will not discuss the second half. Including the paradoxical plot twists of conception and death. This is a mind-bending sci-fi tale that purely excels when focussing on the human elements of its characters. Forget about the jarring tonal shift from exquisitely detailed flashback narration to sudden sci-fi extravaganza. Put aside the occasional heavy hand-holding (although justified for the dense concept) that unimaginatively explains the limitations of temporal shifting. Exclude the multitude of entrancing twists that seemingly allow the narrative to crumble towards its inevitable conclusion. Predestination works best when it’s exploring the human condition. The drive that constitutes our soul. And a central focal point, but not the sole purpose, of the story is Jane’s gender reassignment into becoming John. A “woman” valued as intersex. Internalised male organs as well as female. Despite raising transgender issues and justifiably exploring the emotional conflict of such a scenario, it’s never treated as unfamiliar territory. Much like the film in its entirety, it garners an identity. Enhancing accessibility by turning an irrelevant piece of fiction into a relevant transcendental concept. Snook gave an arousing performance of someone undergoing such a procedure. Harnessing female and male acting qualities and nudging them subtly through her performance. Returning to the preliminary question though, the eternally talented Hawke offers this dilemma to the prognosticating Snook, who simply replies “The Rooster”. And yet whilst it was a humorous retort, it maps out the ingenious narrative cohesion that The Spierig Brothers moulded. That intimidating evolutionary deliverance, providing a cathartic allure of inevitability. They masqueraded causality through a simple life story told vividly within the confinements of a cigarette infused bar. Strangely, much like with other labyrinthine features, the second viewing allowed me to sniff out breadcrumbs more clearly. The hidden clues that the Brothers had deliberately positioned to reach the predetermined final destination. Extraordinarily clever. The minuscule runtime should’ve been extended to better build the narrative foundations from the weight of all the mind-blowing twists, but The Spierig Brothers defied genre expectations by pushing a time-orientated story to its limits. The conventional boundaries of storytelling now extended indefinitely, addressing common time travel related issues and exploiting them ingeniously. Intelligence prevails once again.