[PREDESTINATION
screens Thursday March 12th at 8:55 pm and Sunday March 15th at 8:30
pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque. Also available On Demand.]
Review by Bob Ignizio
In most time travel stories, paradoxes
are an unwanted byproduct that need to be either sheepishly explained
or hastily swept under the rug; PREDESTINATION
embraces them. Where the various internal contradictions that arise
throughout something like the TERMINATOR
franchise are treated as unwelcome nuisances best not thought about
too deeply, here they are everything.
The
film begins with an agent of the Temporal Bureau, some sort of time
travel police charged with stopping particularly horrific crimes from
taking place, failing in his efforts to capture a criminal known at
the Fizzle Bomber in 1970s New York City. The agent does manage to
prevent the bomber's crime, but is severely burned in the process.
Recovering in the Bureau's headquarters in the future, the agent
awakens with the face of Ethan Hawke. There he is given one final
mission, one last chance to stop the Fizzle Bomber, before his forced
retirement.
