Delayed Reaction: Predestination

The Pitch: A time-travel puzzle involving a man, a woman, a baby, a time-traveling agent, and a terrorist bomber.

This is tricky. The Delayed Reactions have have an assumption of spoilers baked into them ("delayed" means "you should've seen it by now"). However, I don't think many people actually saw this yet, and it has some pretty fun twists that I don't want to spoil. I guess, I'll keep this vague.

That was a trip. It's based on a 1950s short story (All You Zombies) that I certainly wasn't familiar with. I dug how they chose to keep with the timeline from the short story rather than trying to update and futurize everything. It gave the movie a fun alt-history feeling that not many movies do. I'm impressed by how much the story makes sense, except, of course, for the endless recursion aspect. But, even that makes sense within the logic of the film. I thought this was an Ethan Hawke movie. It turns out that it's really a showcase for Sarah Snook. That's a demanding role and she nails it. Hawke is fine too in a more supporting role.

Pretty much, this is Looper with a more interesting paradox. Predestination would pair nicely with that, 12 Monkeys, or Primer. It would not pair so nicely with About Time. So, that's the kind of time travel it is.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend