These Final Hours

Zak Hilditch, 2015

IMDB

3/5

Having an apocalyptic film set in the land down under feels immediately different. Dealing with the already rough and rugged country that is the continent of Australia, then letting all hell loose adds a different dynamic to the typical sense of sheer panic that we see in the American apocalyptic genre.

Bad guy but deep down good guy James (Nathan Phillips)  rescues young girl Rose (Angourie Rice) from a couple of psychopaths who have taken her prisoner. This is all while guys are running around with axes killing people, while others are looting and others are hiding out in the darkness. Complete insanity. The clock is ticking, where in a short period of time the world will presumably be over. Early on the specifics of the impeding doom are vague, but the inevitable is pieced together for you over the course of the film.

Final Hours is really a story about human morality, what's important in the final hours of your life. Is it about spending the final few hours with the people who want you there? Is it about spending the final hours with the woman you love? Or is it about doing the right thing, what's right in the eyes of universal judgement. Of course all of this depends on what you believe might happen after you die. James doesn't necessarily seem to believe that there is any kind of afterlife, let alone a heaven that is going to open it's doors for him because he has saved a young girl's life. In fact, the world that is about to burn seems like a world quite absent of spiritual divinity. When James arrives at Freddy's countdown party, it's a modern day Sodom and Gommorah showcase of sinful behavior. Sex, drugs, death. Watching that scene triggers an inner philosophical dialogue too. Is what they are doing really that wrong? They are attempting to enjoy the final moments of their lives.

This film gets you thinking, in a moral sense sort of like how Deep Impact made you think. What would you do? How would you react? Nobody really knows. You don't really know until it happens, and you see what your circumstances are. These Final Hours are really a single man's circumstances laid out before him.

Predestination

Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig, 2014

IMDB

2/5

One of the redeeming qualities of Ethan Hawke is he will take on a wide variety of roles. He will jump into low-key indie performances as he has done with his with his many collaborations with the great Richard Linklater. But he will also venture into more unique roles, occasionally in the Sci-Fi genre, as he has done in vampire-themed Daybreakers or space-themed Gattaca.

Out of his 56 acting credits listed on IMDB, the variety is obvious as he has played everything from an LAPD cop to a plane-crash survivor to a leading Hamlet role in a 2000 adaptation. The thing with Hawke is he always brings a certain familiarity to his roles. He has a real distinctive energy in most of his work. But his barkeep character is for the most part a serious one. As a time traveling agent he attempts to save lives by preventing disasters. Frustrated by his inability to successfully catch up to a terrorist dead-set on racking up fatalities, he is seemingly in eternal pursuit through time.

The tone of the film changes when he are introduced to the “Unmarried Mother” character (Sarah Snook). It seems as if we are supposed to be fooled, but most viewers probably will not be. This doesn’t fully take away from the direction that the story goes. The Spierig Brothers go on to lay out a pretty engaging story that is complex and unique. But it grows complicated, becomes a bit convoluted. By the end of the movie it feels like they are attempting to cram in exposition and it feels rushed. At this point in 2015 we have seen so many time travel films. Some are good: Back to the Future, Looper, Groundhog Day, Donnie Darko, Primer, Timecrimes. Some are not-so-good: Black Knight, Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation, Click. When you think of the good ones, there’s always some memory that you carry with you that you can always come back to. With the bad ones, like most bad movies, don’t give you much to come back to mentally. That’s the big question here. Is there any memorable element in Predestination to come back to? Predestination certainly has some brains behind it but it just doesn't leave you with much to talk about afterwards. Sometimes movies need to be more than just smart. Sometimes audiences need something more impactful. It's probably in the imagery, and we just don't have enough of it here.