I watched Looper on Netflix due to their ability to expose the trailer to me about one out of every three times I opened the app. It’s a Sci-fi/Action film released in 2012 with our three big stars being Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt. After my viewing, I felt like it was a blend and maybe a “wanna-be” of Inception and Blade Runner. The plot isn’t entirely similar to Blade Runner as it is Inception but it gave me that vibe because of the time travel and futuristic vibe. Maybe this is just me not being well versed and experienced in watching Sci-fi and thinking every Sci-fi is a Blade Runner inspired movie. Regardless, I was a fan of Looper.
The movie sets in 2044 and 2074 so you only have to keep track of two times which proves to be very important in understanding merely anything in the film. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is our main character who works in a futuristic job where he takes care of the dirty work of the future, killing people the future sends back through a time machine so that the person practically vanishes from the timeline These people who kill the people sent back are called Loopers, essentially closing the loops of the victims. Now where this gets tricky is the Loopers are on contracts, being sent their paychecks on the backs of people they kill once they’re sent back. Since the future as a whole has outlawed time travel except for this business and the Looping business isn’t viewed as ethical, they need to bury their tracks. The future has to end the contracts with the Loopers by wiping themselves out, literally. The Loopers will be sent a masked and cloaked victim to shoot like any other time, but this time it’s them, from the future. If you’re doing the thinking right now, that means that the Looper has time to live from the time they killed themself in the past to when they get killed. This process is known in the movie as “closing your loop.” Joe has to deal with the tricky situation and a few other plot varying factors when he stumbles across his old self during the job. But, Joe’s old self got away from him instead of being killed.
The Pros
Since this is really a two man movie for most of the screen time, I’d say that Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a great job managing to make this movie engaging, as he was the main character throughout and in almost every scene. I describe his acting in this film as portraying his character mysterious, suspicious, and intricate. It was the opening scene of Looper that caught my eye because he was describing what Loopers do. The line delivery was just so mysterious sounding and set the tone for the rest of the movie, which is very important and I commend it.
I was really impressed with the creation of the Looper. The idea is intriguing because it’s an employer to employee connection bonded literally through different time points whilst working in the medium of time travel. As much as I’ve ripped or going to rip on this movie for trying to be other Sci-fi movies, it solidifies its own legacy because it has been the only movie I’ve heard of that creates such an interesting occupation working within two points in history with time travel.
The Cons
Before writing The Pros and The Cons, I really was excited to get to it, but now I realize I have more cons than pros for the movie.
First things first and I think maybe some people can get on board with me here, but I felt this one ran a little long. Standing at almost two hours, that “wanna-be” Inception idea I was talking about earlier is created by this movie when it stretches from its identity when it runs for longer than it should. I say that for a lot of movies but I felt that the second part of the plot with Cid and the Rainmaker just could have been shortened. Now, if the filmmakers heard or read me saying this they would probably say “Well who says Looper can’t have the Identity of an Inception or Blade Runner” and I have two responses, one being “It doesn’t have enough characters to make it more diverse and dimensional like those movies” and my other response being “I don’t know.”
My other main dislike and also distractor is Bruce Willis looking nothing like old Joe. I don’t know if they gave Bruce Willis this opportunity because they were like “Oh my god it’s Bruce Willis” or because they actually thought he would be able to look like older him. It literally took me about maybe 25 minutes after his character was introduced to figure out it was older Joe, because it does not line up. This is just a no brainer that you have to get right in the craft of the movie. There can’t be confusion over who the characters are.
Hopefully you’ll still give this one a shot after all my criticisms because the movie still is very unique. Looper. The Score is a 71.