The austere man’s Wachowkis siblings, Michael and Peter Spierig are sci-fi-oriented kin with a new action-thriller **Predestination **that promises to weave and duck through the fabric of time like a boxer in a Tardis. Ethan Hawke is the headliner but the real star of the show looks like Australian actress Sarah Snook as a mysterious time traveller.
Hawke, who is reuniting with the pair after 2010 misfire Daybreakers, plays a temporal agent who travels through the decades, Time Cop-style, solving crimes before they’re committed. Runs the official synopsis:
“In mid-’70s New York, a man in a fedora slips into an office building’s boiler room, carrying a mysterious briefcase. He uncovers a bomb, and is attacked while struggling to deactivate it. He succeeds — almost. Horribly disfigured, he’s transported to his agency’s headquarters where he receives a new face. He’s a temporal agent, traveling back and forth through time, altering history, and his assignment — thwart the mass murder perpetrated by the so-called ‘Fizzle Bomber’ — continues. New face, new place. Now he’s undercover as a bartender. He falls into conversation with a tough yet androgynous customer. There’s something off about the guy, who offers to enlighten the agent with ‘the best story you ever heard’.”
It’s based on All You Zombies, a short story by American sci-fi doyen Robert Heinlein, and promises plot machinations that will pop your corn for you. Could be another one for the **Looper **/ **Primer **almanac of time-travel charts.
Shooting took place in Melbourne and Sony have picked up US distribution rights on the Aussie production. No word on a UK deal yet, but expect news on that over the next few months.