SCI-FI THRILLER; 1hr 37min
STARRING: Ethan Hawke, Noah Taylor, Sarah Snook
Time-travel agent: Taylor
So a time-travelling Temporal Agent walks into a 1970 New York bar … and considering said bar comes equipped by film-maker brothers Michael and Peter Spierig (Daybreakers), working from the Robert A. Heinlein short story “All You Zombies”, you’d better believe it isn’t just any bog-standard watering hole.
Hawke is the savagely scarred agent in question, with unenviable, shadow-boxing job of preventing crimes before they happen. Good luck with that! Despatched by his cryptic boss (Taylor) on a final, pivotal mission to foil a serial bomber, his cover is as a bartender. The first customer the troubled agent links up with (a chameleonic-and-how Snook) has an even more freaky life story than he does. It’s a disaster zone of a stolen baby, an orphanage childhood, social ostracism and betrayal in love, all overshadowed by the ambiguous sexuality I defy mere mortals to see coming, so lost will they be in the ascending, identity-melding insanity.
A pea-souper of monumental proportions, the Spierigs’ noir-styled head-spin fuses flickers of genius with flat-chat crazy while boldly daring you to try to keep up. Good luck with that, as well.
