Predestination

A sci-fi story full of temporal paradoxes, whose highlight is the first half marked by a retrospective narrative of an extraordinary human destiny. If the whole film were as gripping and atmospheric as this opening passage, which gave me pleasant chills just by the beautifully matched shots of the faces of the two discussing characters, it would be an absolute and unprecedented hit. But the last thirty minutes not only made my head too muddled with all the time shifts, but also completely disrupted the existing harmony of the narrative, which up until then had made me purr with unconcealed bliss. It's as if the Spierigs wanted to convey an awful lot, but while I bought and believed it at the beginning, by the end I was barely listening. Great shame. 70% (07/08/2015)

A film that will make your head spin with its temporal paradoxes and atypical sequence of scenes. But I’m not sure how much of this was the intention of the people behind the film and how much was purely failed experimentation. But the beginning has everything, gripping immersion, the camera raids, the dark filters – an atmosphere like in Watchmen. The middle is better thanks to Sarah Snook, who steals all for herself. But the revealing ending is chaotic already. After it's over, it leaves some uncomfortable question marks here and there, and that's not good. (06/08/2016)

Here even the word “paradox” falls short… In other time-travel films, time paradoxes are obstacles that the filmmakers try to overcome to no avail, and which fully manifest once the viewer begins to question the logic of the story, but in Predestination, the paradox is the alpha and the omega of the story. The creators carefully build it, almost trying to make it as paradoxical as possible. (11/25/2014)

It's driving me crazy. This whole film is a paradox, its plot was probably never written... And yet it was filmed... Or wasn't it? Wow... The first fifty minutes are a great spectacle and so much emotion is hard to see in science fiction (I remembered Gattaca), but the rest, which gradually leads to the long-awaited and very blatantly hinted at point, unfortunately has to layer one "shocking" paradox on top of another in order to cover it up. The result is a time-traveling science fiction stew that leaves you with a great desire to see it again and a great fear that it will be even worse the second time around. Three and a half. (09/28/2015)

The bar conversation is so brilliant you forget you're watching a sci-fi about time travel. Then the action starts, and if you have already seen a few films like this, you'll start to get an idea of what the brothers will try to pull on you at the end. I could have been annoyed at them maybe even more, but the fact that they actually keep it pretty low-key the whole time and everything is dealt with in a rather non-violent way with clever dialogues makes me go quite high with my rating in the end. (07/08/2015)