The marriage between science fiction and crime works more often than it fails. After all, advanced science makes work easier for lawbreakers and those willing to either stop the madness or maintain law and order in society. Throw in a few twists and turns, and you have a perfect movie that’s likely to thrill large audiences, including those who have never cared about either of the two genres.
Over the years, hundreds of great sci-fi thrillers have been released, and among them, a few deserve commendation and recommendation because of how creative they are. These films kick off with what seem like simple concepts only to pull viewers into a larger labyrinthine field that leaves them dizzy but glad they got there anyway. Additionally, most of the movies were ahead of their time when they were released, hence they have aged rather well.
10 Looper (2012)
The year is 2044 in Looper and 25-year-old Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has a well-paying job as a hitman for the Kansas City mafia. His job is to eliminate targets that have been sent back in time from the year 2074. It’s revealed that the mob has made a habit of throwing “whacking candidates” back in time because law enforcement is so advanced in the 2070s that it’s impossible to dispose of dead bodies without being detected. Soon, Joe finds himself being targeted by the same people who employed him.
The Battle of the Joes
In Looper, filmmaker Rian Johnson (best known for the Knives Out film series) delivers an idiosyncratic film that brims with chaos. It is packed with wild turns, including the revelation that any hitman who lives until the 2070s is sent back in time to be whacked by a younger version of themselves to tie up all loose ends.
Gordon-Levitt fits the oddball and obsessive-compulsive Joe like a glove, but it is Bruce Willis who steals the picture as the careworn, world-weary older version of the character. Also, check out Emily Blunt in a dominant turn as Joe’s love interest. Willis might have picked a lot of wrong scripts in recent years, but this right here is something he will forever be thankful for.
9 Upgrade (2018)
Upgrade could be categorized among the many descendants of James Cameron’s The Terminator. Events kick off on a sad note when auto-mechanic Trace (Logan Marshal Greene) and his wife get involved in a road accident while heading back home in their self-driving vehicle. Fate throws more stones their way, courtesy of muggers who murder Trace’s wife, and leave him paralyzed.
Everything seems bleak, but dawn arrives in the form of a billionaire tech inventor who offers Trace an A.I. implant that enhances all his bodily functions, giving him superhuman strength.
Beware of A.I.
This is one of those “A.I. will finish us” movies that are popping up lately, but it works, thanks to actor Logan Marshall-Green’s pitch-perfect handling of the central role. His Trace is no arrogant punisher but a self-reflecting man who has been robbed of everything he desires. The movie’s fundamental charm comes from the shockers, the major one being that the tech inventor wasn’t actually controlling the A.I. It was the A.I. that was controlling him. From there on, things get a lot darker.
8 Inception (2009)
Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, a thief with the unusual ability to infiltrate people’s dreams and extract secrets from their subconscious. As expected, the skill makes him an in-demand criminal in the world of corporate espionage, but also causes him to lose things he holds dear. He is ultimately offered his biggest job, involving planting an idea in someone’s mind in exchange for his criminal history getting erased. However, the job doesn’t go as smoothly as anticipated.
Still as Confusing as When It First Came Out
There are a few films whose plots audiences can be forgiven for not comprehending, and Inception ranks highly among those. Made on a whopping budget of $160 million, it is the most theoretically complex Christopher Nolan film. Cobb is intriguing as a morally ambiguous protagonist, a man fighting for his own independence against fatalistic forces, and Nolan imbues the plot with both a film noir and a heist feel, creating a perfect film that can be studied as a science course.
7 Gattaca (1997)
Gattaca is set in a future society where conception through eugenics is the norm and genetic discrimination is real. Those with inferior genetics (in-valids) are relegated to menial jobs while those with superior genetics (valids) get the best opportunities. Eager to achieve his dream of joining a space program, office cleaner Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), purchases the genes of a valid. But things take a wild turn when he gets accused of an officer’s murder.
Striving for the Best
This hypnotic film by New Zealand director Andrew Niccol keenly addresses themes of ambition and prejudice in both story and setting. It also cautions society against unregulated advancement in reproductive technologies. Beyond that, the actors do a splendid job. Uma Thurman is luminous as Vincent’s love interest, but Hawke is the film’s heart and soul.
A top-notch, convolution-packed, script by the director himself then completes this winning package. Watch out for the moment where it’s revealed that Vincent has been posing as a valid all along. Will he be punished?
6 Total Recall (1990)
Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall chronicles the misadventures of Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a construction worker in the year 2084 who is bored with his life and dreams of visiting the colonized Mars. He visits “Rekall,” a fake-it-till-you-make-it kind of company that plants fake memories into citizens’ brains, allowing them to experience Mars without traveling there. However, a glitch happens and Quaid discovers that his entire existence has been a false memory.
The Best Philip K. Dick Adaptation
Total Recall dumps endless bombshells on the viewer, the biggest among them being that Quaid was a Martian secret agent in real life and now the people who gave him the fake memory want him dead. The crazy revelations make sense considering that the film is adapted from one of Philip K. Dick’s works, and the sci-fi author was never known to tell a straightforward story.
The ever-intense Sharone Stone delivers an entrancing performance as Quaid’s wife (who is later revealed to be a secret agent), but it’s Schwarzenegger, in a superb turn as the curious protagonist, who earns top honors. Great support from Rachel Ticotin as a Martian freedom fighter, and Ronny Cox as the governor of the Martian colony, round out the cast. Overall, this gritty, searing science fiction flick ranks with Robocop as director Paul Verhoeven’s very best efforts.
5 Timecrimes (2007)
When the voyeuristic Hector (Karra Elejalde) decides to spy on a woman who is exposing her breasts near his property in Timecrimes, he figures he is in for a few minutes of softcore fun. Unfortunately for him, the situation changes very quickly. He gets attacked by a mysterious man whose entire head is wrapped in bandages. While fleeing, he decides to hide in a scientific facility, only to be thrown an hour into the past and become stuck in a time loop.
Hector Is Both the Protagonist and the Antagonist
The bandaged man who attacks Hector is actually a version of himself from a different timeline of the same day. How does that happen? Well, seeing for yourself would be more fun. Perhaps the most spellbinding and suspenseful of Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo’s thrillers, Timecrimes is also his gloomiest and most personal effort. Apart from his mastery of mood and storytelling, he remarkably delivers on the visuals.
Despite this being a low-budget sci-fi flick, it looks stunningly beautiful. Moreover, the talented cast, which includes Nacho himself as a scientist, do a perfect job of channeling the hellish realities of the woods and the surrounding environment. Miss it, miss out.
4 Dark City (1998)
In Dark City, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a hotel to realize he is wanted for a series of murders. Sadly, he has amnesia, so he can’t remember if he committed the crimes or not. As any person would, he works hard to solve the mystery, and while doing that, he comes across a bizarre underworld populated by a group of pale men in coats, commonly known as the Strangers.
It Gets Darker
The film could be described as a large dissection of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and for the most part, it stays heavily intellectual. The fresh details sprinkled all over the movie are very rewarding too, especially the explanation about who the Strangers really are, and why they look the way they do. Generally, Dark City calls for patience and attentiveness, but for audiences willing to yield to the freaky and forlorn spirit of the movie, the reward is an awe-inspiring experience that stays with you forever.
3 Source Code (2011)
Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as U.S. Army captain Colter Stevens, who is inserted into an eight-minute virtual re-creation of the events preceding a real-world terror attack on a train, and tasked with determining the identity of the culprit. As Colter re-lives the moments again and again via a loop, he becomes convinced he can figure out a way to prevent the initial attack from happening, as long as he sticks to time.
What’s Real and What’s Not?
British filmmaker Duncan Jones’ masterpiece is a rigorously drawn, heart-wrenching tale of normalcy disrupted due to terror. Jones expertly channels this nightmarish experience through repetition with slight variations, and inspires pitch-perfect performances from all the cast members. Be alert for the final bombshell, where we learn that this is more than just a simulation. Also, everything isn’t as it seems with Colter Stevens. He might look like an enthusiastic soldier on the outside, but there are shady men puppeteering him behind the shadows.
2 Minority Report (2002)
Minority Report is set in Washington D.C. in 2054. In this timeline, the police can stop a crime before it happens by utilizing new foreknowledge psychic technology. Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise), the commanding officer of Precrime, is tasked with ensuring everything goes smoothly, but fate takes an interesting turn when he, himself, is accused of the future murder of a person he has never even met yet.
Predicting the Future
In Minority Report, Steven Spielberg uses a large recipe that consists of tech noir, thriller, whodunit, and science fiction, resulting in a tasty flick. And so prescient is the plot, that most of the technologies introduced then are a reality now. When the film came out, driverless cars, personalized ads, and voice-controlled homes weren’t a thing yet, but they sure are now.
Lurking beneath the film’s veneer and weird, clever chills is a smart critique of police brutality – one that in itself leads to another disturbing twist. For a while, it seems like Anderton is heading to jail too, only for events to take a different route.
1 Predestination (2014)
Based on Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 short story “All You Zombies,” Predestination covers the woes of the Temporal Bureau officer (Ethan Hawke) after he is sent back in time to prevent a terror attack in 1975 by the notorious Fizzle Bomber. Unknown to the officer, he is the same person destined to be the Fizzle Bomber.
Time Travel Like It Has Never Been Seen Before
There are plenty of exciting theorems in Predestination that make it stand out from other time-travel movies. For example, someone can reach a jump limit, which is something that happens to the protagonist, forcing him to choose one timeline to retire to (he chooses the ‘70s). His journeys through time are also made possible via a violin case.
Even better, the exposing of Hawke’s character as the Fizzle Bomber only makes up a tiny percentage of the movie’s twists. There is a lot more, and at some point, it all gets completely dizzying, but it’s worth it.