Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Looper Movie Review (Some Spoilers)





The year is 2072 and 30 years into the future it is hard for the mob to eliminate bodies.  So they send them back in time to be killed by a Looper.  A Looper is someone who is paid in silver to do the killing and elimination of the body from the future.  So there would be no trace of it.  If you decide to quite being a Looper, or the crime bosses terminate your contract, you live for 30 years before they send you back to the past where you end up killing yourself and getting a gold payoff.


One day for Joe who is a wise Looper who plays by the rules has his future self shows up and escapes.  The chase is on as future and past Joe meet and try to talk about changing the past and killing the Rainmaker.  For if they do kill the Rainmaker as a child the future won’t happen and future Joe’s life would be ok. Thus is the dilemma as young Joe thinks not and wants to stop his future self.


Well I have to say that Looper is a pretty good movie and one of the best written movies I have seen this year.   It was extremely clever even with the ending.  I know that I’ve been advocating easy plots and non-brain busting complicated scenarios lately but, well, every once in a while you need to go see a movie that challenges your brain and keeps you thinking for hours after watching it.

Which I did, a lot.  I thought about this movie for quite some time after watching it.  I just thought this movie was pretty cool.  Finally an original idea from Hollywood and it is in the independent film produced by its star Joseph Gordon- Levitt.  Who I have to say is starting to be one of my new favorite actors.  He was really good in Looper and was really good in Batman earlier this summer.  The fact that he went and altered himself to look like Bruce Willis makes you know how dedicated he was to make this movie.  Truly a good make job as he did look a bit like Bruce Willis.


What I really liked about this movie was that the time travel was more or less in the background and did not take center stage.  Far too many times in a movie that involves time travel the writers and makers of the movie has it as the focal point of the movie.  Looper is the exception as it doesn’t fall into that trap and that is probably why I enjoyed Looper so much.

I really enjoyed the overall story of Looper having the two Joes at odds with each other.  It seemed odd but it did give it an alternate reality to it.  Old Joe was so brutal and so hell bent on saving his future that he would go to no lengths to save his wife in his timeline.   I also like when young Joe was on Sara’s farm.  Here you see a part of Joe and get to know more about him.  Plus the relationship he builds with Cid is touching also and does have implications on the ending.


Cid really freaked me out.  Cid is a TK, as is his mom, but more of a mutant type with strange powers.  As it turns out young Joe is in essence befriending with the person who sends him back to die.  Something that we learn is that Joe shaped his own future and it is with this turn of events that might change things.  Plus Cid’s mom is played by Emily Blunt who I find really attractive and is a wonderful actress.  In fact this is one of her best performances that I have seen from her.


Oh by the way this movie had quite a bit of action in it also.  In fact it had a lot of action.  Not only was this a movie that you had to think and concentrate on the events going on but there were quiet a lot of gun fights going on to make the cast of The Expendables smile.  Lots of great scenes involving Bruce Willis being the action hero and I loved seeing that.    


This movie was really surprising and had a pretty good story going on.  It was smart and intelligent and did not talk down to the audience.  Yes it was complicated at times but not so much as to not enjoy it.  The performances were great and really made you feel for the characters and the situations they were in.  So if you are up to giving your brain a workout with enough mindless action to give it a break then go see Looper and your brain will thank you for it.

3 comments:

  1. Spoiler Comment - The rules of time travel as displayed in this movie - are that when something happens to an earlier self of someone, it automatically happens to the future self. Example - cutting off a hand of younger self and the older self's hand just vanishes. While this method is flawed I can buy it but then when one character kills himself, shouldn't the old self just turn into a pile of bones and not just vanish?

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  2. No it would mean his future self would never have existed.

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  3. Never existed? You would think but not in this movie. Earlier when that guy lost limb after limb it was obvious that the changes made to the younger self changes the body of the older self. If that guy had no legs for 30 years do you think he would have crawled away from his younger self? Would't he had prosthetics? If the movie wanted to stick with changing the future changes outcomes it should have done it differently. The changes made to present day bodies was instant to the future selves but the altering of actions did not seem to matter as much.

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