Just caught this by accident. A genuinely unsettling movie, with a twisty time-travel story that gets weirder and weirder - and weirder. Won’t spoil at this stage, but I highly recommend it if you’re looking for something fresh and un-cliched.
The overall feel is like an extended episode of the original Twilight Zone - i.e. it’s intense and narrowly focussed on one powerful s-f theme and a few characters, almost to the point of claustrophobia (and in fact, although you’ll probably guess it all about a third of the way through, going through the motions, with a growing sense of fascination and creeping horror is still worth it, and fits the theme … ). The fact that it’s based on a Robert Heinlein story sort of adds to the Twilight-Zone-ishness of it, it has that solid feel of classic, mind-expanding s-f.
Nice period settings from the 40s, 60s, 70s and 80s, great acting turns from Ethan Hawke, good old Noah Taylor and an amazing Sarah Snook.
Distribution is weird, it’s been available in theatres only in Australia and NZ earlier this year, don’t know about theatrical distribution elsewhere, but it’s going to be available worldwide through the usual online channels in December/Jan.
I’m still trying to piece together the various threads of the movie. Like guru says, you can see the twist coming and are just watching it unfold in fascination. Not a bad film!
Robertson
[spoiler]Would’ve been cool if they’d revealed a bit more of the time mechanics and Robertsons plans & how much he was aware of the “illegal” time jumps.
Was it always his plan to create the Fizzle Bomber? ie to give him/her an active timetravel device so that the bombs are set off in order to accept civilian casualties for the greater good?[/spoiler]
I really enjoyed this. It has a scene early on with two people just having a conversation in a bar. It held my attention. Ethan Hawke is a much better actor than I thought.
I watched this last week on CBS All Access. I’m surprised that the movie reveals its main reveal so early. And then they try to hide that by doing another reveal later in the movie, I guess hoping that we’ll forget about the reveal earlier and still be surprised by it.
Still, it’s a movie where it’s hard to keep the reveal from the viewer in any case, so I liked that they tried something different. And overall I enjoyed the movie.
After watching Tenet twice in a row yesterday, I was hungry for another movie involving time shenanigans and rented this one for a couple bucks.
Because it’s a rental, I won’t have the luxury of re-watching certain key scenes to help better understand various clues or explanations about the fate of one particular character, but I’m also not compelled to watch the movie a second time in so short a time (before the rental expires) as I was eager to do with Tenet.
The movie languishes too long for the first half, spending far too much time with Jane’s backstory and ongoing exposition, and by the time it starts to throw curves at the audience all the movie ends up doing is playing catch-up to the audience’s inevitable conclusions anyway.
The second half was better than the first, but still too predictable.
