PREDESTINATION

-
Notwithstanding that back in my teens I might very well have read the Robert Heinlein story this film is based on I had no idea what to expect.

After some confusing scenes that establish Ethan Hawke as some kind of time travelling law enforcement agent who is trying to stop a serial bomber, and show us someone getting badly disfigured in an explosion, I certainly didn't expect that we'd spend the first half of the film with Hawke as a bartender in 1970 New York listening to the life story of a young customer, John.

Yes, if you came to this film expecting an action orientated time travel film (such as the splendid 'Edge of Tomorrow' for example) you are going to be disappointed, serial bomber or no serial bomber.

Anyway, back to John and his remarkable life story.  Turns out 'he' was born a woman, Jane, but one who is intersex, so that following a difficult pregnancy she undergoes sex change surgery.  If that wasn't enough, there's a mystery as to Jane's provenance in that as a baby she was left outside an orphanage.  Also her baby girl is stolen from the hospital soon after the birth.  And the father of her child disappeared from the scene way before the birth.

In the second half of the film Hawke reveals to John that he is a time traveller so that John can be taken back in time to carry out his destiny: to seduce Jane (i.e. himself).  It is then revealed that Hawke was the one who stole Jane's baby and then deposited it outside the orphanage. So Jane, her mother and father are all the same person!

If this isn't crazy enough we then learn that Hawke himself is an older version of John.

It's mind-boggling stuff to be sure, which Heinlein must have had great fun constructing, and it makes for an entertaining film up to a point.

The business with the serial bomber is not in the original story and presumably it is here because John needs to suffer a bad enough facial injury to explain why young John looks nothing like Ethan Hawke.

It also provides a dramatic scene towards the end where Hawke discovers that he himself is the bomber and kills his older self.  I have to say that this scene didn't work for me, because Hawke being the bomber seemed contrived and implausible.

John and Jane are both memorably played by Sarah Snook, before she became Shiv Roy in 'Succession'.  

RATING: ✓ Cheers

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHERE EAGLES DARE

-
Rather embarrassingly I sometimes confuse this film with ‘The Eagle Has Landed’. Admittedly they are both classic WW2 adventures with similar titles - but even so. This film is described by Wikipedia as an ‘’action adventure war thriller spy film" which hints at why it is so beloved - over its 155 minutes it manages to span three or four popular genres. Which is not to say it needs all that runtime - it would be easy to cut 20 minutes or so.  For example, the sequences after  the moment when the chief goal of the mission has been accomplished could surely be trimmed. It is a measure of Richard Burton’s star power in the mid-1960s that all he needed to do was express a wish to be the lead in an action film (for Elizabeth Taylor’s children to enjoy) and hey presto a film studio makes it happen. I had assumed that this film was an adaptation of an existing Alistair Maclean novel but in fact he wrote the screenplay to order, in just six weeks (he then converted it to a novel). Giv...
Read more

UNION PACIFIC

-
Image
To call this a Western would be to give scant justice to its epic scale, but then what else would you expect from a film directed by Cecil B. DeMille?  It has a running time of 135 minutes, extras fill the screen at every opportunity (such as the saloon scenes) and there are two spectacular trainwrecks along with all the other drama.  Considering it is ostensibly a celebration of the completion of a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans it is a surprisingly entertaining film.   It is established early on in the story that a tycoon who pretends to be backing the Union Pacific Railroad secretly wants to sabotage the building of the track in order to make a huge financial killing (the details of which can safely be ignored).  To this end he employs shady gambler and saloon owner, Sid Campeau (Brian Donleavy), to use gambling, booze and women to cause trouble among the labourers. Given the success of Campeau's efforts, the railroad company recruits Captai...
Read more

WICKED

-
As someone who is suspicious of any film musical since 1979's ‘All That Jazz’ (a kind of high water mark), and as one who doesn’t feel that every villain needs a backstory, I approached this film with some trepidation, especially since  turning a stage musical into two lengthy films seemed self indulgent. Despite all of these concerns however, I enjoyed the ride.  It didn’t drag, it has some decent songs (and one very good one), and it wasn't as CGI-heavy as it might have been. It also sprung a few surprises. For example, it's very woke.  Not content with a main character, Elphaba, who is discriminated against solely because of the colour of her skin, the story gives her a sister in a wheelchair, as well as (another surprise) talking animals who are being persecuted. Their oppressor is of course the Wizard of Oz himself, but trying to explain to any young children watching this film why he is being so beastly to the cuddly animals might be challenging.   ...
Read more