Volition 2019

Jimmy is a reformed ex-criminal living a quiet, low-key life, using a gift of clairvoyance to place small bets on sports. One night, while walking home, he intervenes when two men harass a woman in an alley, choosing to stand up for her even though they beat him and flee. The woman, Angela, is amused by his chivalry and begins to flirt. She leaves him with a hint of mystery, and Jimmy suddenly has a vision of Angela arriving at his apartment with a case of beer, sharing laughs, and teasing him about visiting if she ever wants to.

Soon after, Sal, an old friend recently released from jail, reintroduces Jimmy to Ray, a drug trafficker with a bigger scheme. Ray wants Jimmy to fence millions of dollars in stolen diamonds, promising him a cut that seems too good to pass up. Jimmy hesitates, but in a vision he sees himself agreeing to the deal. Convinced that his fate is sealed and that free will may be an illusion, he agrees to take on the diamonds.

Angela does indeed show up at his apartment with beer, just as Jimmy had foreseen. As they talk, Jimmy opens up about his past: his mother died when he was young, and he’s never been close with his foster dad. Angela, revealing her own estrangements from her family, forms a connection with him in that moment.

Sal and his associate, Terry, plan to double-cross Ray and steal the diamonds for themselves. They break into Jimmy’s apartment, prompting Jimmy and Angela to flee in her car. In a tense exchange, Angela asks what’s happening, and Jimmy reveals his clairvoyance and his fear that the future is already written; he also recalls a vision of his mother’s death in a car accident from childhood. In the midst of the chaos, Jimmy experiences another vision of his foster dad, Elliot, a quantum physicist.

The danger intensifies as Sal, Ray, and Terry break into Elliot’s house. Sal accuses Jimmy of double-crossing them, and Ray threatens him in the shadows. The confrontation erupts into violence; Ray fatally shoots Angela. Caught in the line of fire, Jimmy hides in a closet as Elliot injects him with a syringe, and Jimmy loses consciousness.

He wakes in the same closet, but everything around him looks different: Elliot explains that Jimmy has been injected with a time travel drug, and the year is now 1994. The revelation is that the ability to travel through time and return to the present — enabled by the drug — is what powers Jimmy’s clairvoyance. Determined to break the pattern, Jimmy decides to return to the present, refuse the diamond deal, and try to save Angela.

Taking another dose, he returns to the present day and interrupts Sal and Terry’s robbery, delivering the diamonds to Elliot’s control. He hides in the bushes as a second version of himself arrives, and the original Jimmy witnesses Ray shoot Angela again. An unknown assailant shoots the original Jimmy, and with his last breath he injects himself with another dose of the time travel drug. The strain of time travel fractures his being; he sees himself both as the thug who harassed Angela and as the drunk guy he bumped into earlier that day.

Back in Elliot’s lab, the lifeline of the story loops again: Jimmy travels back in time to appear years before they even meet. Aware that he is dying, he seeks help from Elliot, who begins treating him while noticing a silver liquid leaking from the drug inside Jimmy’s body. Elliot realizes that, in the future, he will have perfected the time travel drug he’s working on now. Jimmy urges Elliot to go to the foster home and adopt James Odin — his younger self.

In another timeline fragment, a version of Jimmy observes a fight at Elliot’s home in the present day, but in that version Angela is only wounded in the shoulder rather than killed. The paradox begins to resolve as Jimmy, now mindful of his power to alter outcomes, rushes to Angela’s side in that timeline and embraces the possibility that his choices can truly change the future for the better.