There is nothing more frustrating, in my opinion, than a very, very good film that falls just short of being a great film.

That, in a nutshell, is what I feel regarding Predestination, the Ethan Hawke/Sarah Snook time travel film.

Based on All You Zombies, a justifiably famous (and crazy) Robert A. Heinlein short story, Predestination adheres to that story’s plot faithfully, though it does add elements, particularly those involving a mysterious bomber, to the story to expand it to the feature’s length while providing some action/suspense.  This expansion didn’t bother me at all and, when the film ended, proved to cleverly form a “loop” to all that we had seen up to that point.

But as I said before, the film left something to be desired, and it is frustrating how close it was to being a great work.  In the early going the film spends, in my opinion, waaaay too much time on Sarah Snook’s (who is absolutely terrific) Jane character.  While much of the information is pertinent to what follows, other parts could, and should, have been trimmed down (just off the top of my head: Did we need to see the child Jane spying her orphanage handlers having sex?  Did we need to see the character getting into so many fights?)

Toward the end (and I’m trying to avoid spoilers here), when the revelations started coming as to who is who, it became too obvious where we were going with the added story elements.  Again, brevity might have been better here as well.  Also, some of the dialogue, while clever in the opening bits at the bar (the chicken/egg joke clues you in well with what’s coming), became so obvious in the later parts of the film, especially when John talks to a woman about a typewriter, that I felt I was being hit over the head with “meaningful” lines.

Having said all that, Predestination is nonetheless a good film worthy of your time.  It offers a faithful take on Robert A Heinlein mind-altering story yet adds its own decent elements to the mix.  While the film does dwell a little too much on details that might have been better cut and some of the dialogue towards the end is way too obvious, the film is nonetheless still worth seeing.