A bartender come temporal agent (Ethan Hawke) is charged with jumping back and forth in time to catch the notorious serial bomber known as The Fizzle. The instruction comes from his boss, bureau chief Mr Robertson (Noah Taylor), himself somewhat of an untimely paradox.
In between huge leaps of faith, sepia backdrops and facial burns, The Bartender deliberately meets true-confessions scribe The Unmarried Mother, superbly played by newcomer Sarah Snook, and thus listens enthralled, over a bottle of whisky, to her tale of gender reassignment, space whoring, the kidnapping of her infant child and the charming rogue who ruined her life.
Not to worry, the Bartender, alias the temporal time-jumping agent of mass confusion, can put the perpetrator right in front of the bitter Unmarried Mother, for revengeful purposes and the righting of obvious wrongly timed wrongs, only …
Only this time-travelling yarn full of fizz – directed by Australian brothers Michael and Peter Spierig (Daybreakers) – has more black holes than a defective temporal lobe.
Sadly, most everyone (excluding a temporal agent) will have little difficulty in guessing who’s who and who did what to whom long before The Bartender catches up with the script, the bomber and, of course, himself.
Time travel certainly isn’t what it used to be. And girls, well, they certainly ain’t girls no more.