“I’m a temporal agent. We prevent crime before it takes place.” So says Ethan Hawke in the new international trailer for sci-fi actioner, Predestination. If you’re wondering why that one utterance sounds so familiar, that’s probably because it sounds similar to Steven Spielberg’s 2002 precog-hit Minority Report. Regardless of the similarities, this one looks kinda neat. It reunites Daybreakers directors Michael and Peter Spierig with Hawke for a tale that’s actually an intriguing proposition.
Part-Looper, part-Minority Report, the story of Hawke’s “Temporal Agent” follows him as he ventures off into the streams of time to stop future murderers from doing any killing. His final day on the job has him tasked with catching one more bad guy – but can he do it?
There’s some pretty cool material in the new trailer that elevates the done-before premise above the usual sci-fi machinations. The very nature of time travel is one that constantly appeals to me, for its displacement of nostalgia, and the film looks like it could definitely arouse some unique insight into the human condition, as it is based on a short story by Robert A. Heinlein.
The word on the street is that even after an early Australian opening, it’s not gonna light up the box office. It also debuted this year at SXSW to less-than-favourable reviews. Daybreakers had a similarly hooky premise, but then failed to deliver when it landed. We’ll find out the fate of Hawke’s time-travel agent early next year, but right now it’s not looking too pretty.
Predestination opens in the US on January 9th, 2015.
PREDESTINATION chronicles the life of a Temporal Agent (Ethan Hawke) sent on an intricate series of time-travel journeys designed to prevent future killers from committing their crimes. Now, on his final assignment, the Agent must stop the one criminal that has eluded him throughout time and prevent a devastating attack in which thousands of lives will be lost.
