Looper, Looper, Looper…It was an entertaining adventure through time. The premise is that 30 years in the future (from 2044), time travel becomes possible and is immediately banned. This, as with porn, pushes it underground and because in the future, gangsters have difficulty disposing of bodies “because of tracking and whatnot” they send their targets into the past at a designated time where an assassin is waiting for them. Blammo! At some point it is determined that the assassins, or Loopers need to be retired and suddenly their future self gets sent back and then…Blammo! The Looper then gets a big payout and a thirty year retirement until their sent back in time and…Blammo! You follow? Good.
Our main character Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt with a CGI’d face to look like a young Bruce Willis) goes to his appointment to do a hit and something goes wrong, his hit wasn’t prepared properly and manages to get the upper hand on him and…Blammo! He gets knocked out by his future self (Bruce Willis who was not CGI’d to look like an old Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The future self decides to kill a future gangster who called in his hit when that gangster was a little kid and narrows it down to three possibilities.
Let’s recap. Young Joe wants to kill Old Joe so he can retire peacefully, Old Joe wants to kill some kids so they don’t grow up and kill his wife and try to kill him by sending him back where he is almost killed by his younger self who wants to kill him while he wants to kill some kids who…I think you all caught up. And then…Blammo! Telekinetic Emily Blunt!
Now that I’ve half-spoiled the movie let’s score it.
The Story totally deserves a +3 as time travel stories are sometimes confusing or rediculous. Sometimes they get hung up on the space-time continuum “and whatnot” but not Looper. It handles everything really well and a clear way. The Look also deserves a +3 as the effects were almost flawless and the Face CGI was pretty good but some of the other visual effects were stellar, the telekinetic farm scenes in particular. The Overall Casting was absolutely top-notch with Joseph Gordon-Levit, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels at his very, very best as well as a great supporting cast and therefore scores a +2. The Commitment to Genre cleans up and brings Looper in to a perfect score!
Subtotal: +10
Futuristic movies often have cool vehicles and sometimes they are well executed, sometimes not. Looper fails here. While there is a great scene where an older self is immediately showing the effects of a past torture, bit by bit and it is an extra-point awesome (+1), Looper offers up a Year 2044 Jet-Bike. The Jet Bike looks really cool when it’s parked but really fails to impress when actually moving. It looks slow and hard to drive and so I’m going to fill it’s gas-tank with sugar and a one point deduction (-1).
Lastly, it’s almost sad to say that the over film had one fatal flaw that sees it punished with a two-point loss (-2). As I’ve said, the premise is based on gangsters not being able to dispose of bodies in the future “because of tracking and whatnot” and that is stupid. Without explaining tracking and whatnot a little better and given that the present year of 2044 shows the world in something of shambles, who’s tracking, why and whatnot? It seems to me that the off-handedness of the “tracking” premise is because it doesn’t really make clear sense while at the same time the entire story is hinged upon that point. They would have been better off leaving it at “so there’s no trace of them in the present”.
In 2000, Lost Souls began with a quote form Deuteronomy about the Devil. That quote was the linch-pin of the entire story but that quote wasn’t actually from the Bible and that pisses me off. Put a quote but build your spooky premise on lying about it’s source. The Bible has enough spooky shit to draw from so use at least a real quote, use it out of context even but don’t straight up lie.
All in all Looper was great and a +8 score is still pretty impressive.
