Predestination was already released in the USA in 2014, but at the beginning of 2015 the film only came to Germany on DVD and not in the cinema. Perhaps this is one reason why the adaptation of a short story by visionary sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein is still an insider’s tip in Germany.
TELE 5 will show “Predestination” on 21 October 2022 at 8.15 pm. There will also be a repeat on Saturday night from 0.50 am. “Predestination” is uncut – even in the 8.15 p.m. broadcast! For despite the FSK-16 seal on the German DVD and Blu-ray, the film itself is released for ages 12 and up.
“PREDESTINATION”: GRIPPING SCIENCE FICTION
Ethan Hawke plays an agent travelling through time for a mysterious institution that prevents attacks across history. But he’s always caught by a bomber, who mutilated him so brutally the last time they met that he needs a makeover. In New York in the 1970s, we meet the agent again as a bartender. He seems to be here undercover – to really stop the assassin this time? In the process, he strikes up a conversation with a lonely drunk: John (Sarah Snook) begins his riveting life story with the words “When I was a girl…”
Robert A. Heinlein, known among other things for the template for “Starship Troopers”, wrote the short story “All You Zombies” on which “Predestination” is based in a single day – and that was back in the summer of 1958. But despite this, the sci-fi thriller by brothers Michael and Peter Spierig (“Daybreakers”) feels incredibly up-to-date – but above all it is sensationally gripping.
SUSPENSE MAINLY THANKS TO STRONG CHARACTERS
A fast-paced opening makes it clear that there will also be action here, but the greatest tension arises from the relationship of the characters – especially, of course, between Ethan Hawke as the bartender and Sarah Snook, who has finally received the attention she deserves thanks to the series “Succession”. The conversation, which is repeatedly interrupted by flashbacks to John’s earlier life as Jane, constantly raises new questions. Again and again you try to piece together the puzzle yourself, again and again there are new twists and possibilities – and this until the closing minutes.
But “Predestination” is not one of those thrillers that live only from their final twist. It’s not just the way to it, but above all the many questions that keep you gripped beyond the film and even during repeated viewings with knowledge of the final punch line that make this film so outstanding. It proves to be an ingenious move not to dismiss the audience with a consistent logical resolution, but to take the classic chicken-and-egg problem of time travel stories by the horns in its full contradictoriness.
