Looper

My Grade:  A+

In case you didn’t already know from some of my previous reviews, I am a huge Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan.  One of my favorite of his films is Brick which was Rian Johnson’s 2005 feature directorial debut.  Looper is the second pairing of Johnson and Gordon-Levitt, so I don’t have to tell you how excited I was to hear about this film.  My already high expectations were made even higher by watching a couple of interviews with JGL (one with Peter Travers of “Rolling Stone” and one with Conan O’Brian).  Sometimes it’s bad to go into a movie with high expectations because it’s likely that the film will be a let down.  Looper is definitely not a let down.

Let’s all take a moment to thank Rian Johnson for writing, directing, and producing an original film that isn’t a sequel, based on a book, a remake, etc.  And, even better, it’s a great story!  It’s 2044 and, 30 years in the future, time travel will have been invented but outlawed.  Criminal organizations still use it, though, as a way to kill people without having to dispose of a body.  They send the target into the past where a “looper” awaits with a sawed off shotgun.  The looper blows them away the moment they appear (bound and gagged), get’s their payday, then goes and parties with strippers and drugs.

  

It’s all fun and games until those in charge decide to “close your loop” or send your future self back in time for you to kill.  That means two things for you:  you get a huge payday and you know you have 30 years left to live.  The problems occur when you “let your loop run” or fail to kill them.  That’s the problem Joe (JGL) faces.  His loop appears and is not bound or gagged... and he’s Bruce Willis, so he escapes.  He doesn’t just escape because he wants to live, though; he escapes to save his wife who gets killed (30 years later) by “The Rainmaker.”  So, Old Joe (Willis) plans to kill the child version of “The Rainmaker”; thus, saving his wife.

I don’t normally explain the plot in my reviews but I want to this time because time travel movies are messy.  They are hard to pull off from a writing standpoint because of all the weird details you have to worry about.  Looper does it better than any other time travel movie I have seen.  Joe and Old Joe even discuss the time travel aspects of their situation and end up brushing off the explanations as “messy.”  It’s a perfect way to not bother with the needless portions of the time travel issues.  The things that matter are addressed and work extremely well.  Also, Rian Johnson does some things with time travel that I haven’t seen done such as having a future version of a guy lose limbs and other extremities in real time as his younger self is being tortured... mind bendingly awesome!

So many things (other than the magnificent writing) stand out that I could write about this film all day, but I will focus on two things:  the look of the film, and the acting.  The look is perfect for this film because it is technically a sci-fi film but it has the feel of a film noir and even black comedy at times.  The reason the look is so perfect is that the city looks highly advanced and slickly sci-fi while also being very run-down.  We are immersed in the dirty underworld of crime, drugs, and murder but it’s also a highly advanced world.

Looper marks the first time that JGL plays a role that was written specifically for him (according to his interview with Peter Travers).  Rian Johnson and JGL are close friends which allows Johnson to write a role perfect for JGL... and he did in Looper.  JGL even pulls off a pretty decent Bruce Willis impression in certain scenes.  Whether that’s what he was going for or not, it works.  Bruce Willis also puts on a heck of a show as Old Joe.  He gets the moments where he can go Die Hard on some people with matching P90s blazing, but he also has some touching moments and reveals his inner struggle of doing the right thing.

The supporting cast is incredible as well.  Most notably Pierce Gagnon (The Crazies) who plays Cid and gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from a child actor.  Then, of course, there’s his mom (Golden Globe winner Emily Blunt).  She is a force to be reckoned with as she toes the line between frail and fierce; she almost steals the show from JGL in some of their scenes together.  Finally, there is Jeff Daniels who made everyone laugh in Dumb and Dumber (as well as other things), and scares us to death while making us laugh as “man from the future,” Abe, in Looper.  I can’t describe him better than Peter Travers does:  “fiercely funny.”

Overall, Looper is an amazingly fresh film with outstanding performances, wild action, and mind blowing visuals... all on a relatively scant budget.  The only issue I have is with the prosthetics used to make JGL look more like Bruce Willis.  It looks good, it’s believable, it doesn’t take away from the film... but it’s unnecessary.  Just making their eyes look the same would be fine.  But go see this film as soon as you can.  You won‘t be disappointed.