Directed by:
Rian JohnsonScreenplay:
Rian JohnsonCinematography:
Steve YedlinComposer:
Nathan JohnsonCast:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo, Noah Segan, David Jensen, Jeff Chase, Garret Dillahunt, Marcus Hester (more)VOD (3)
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In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented – but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a "looper" – a hired gun, like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good... until the day the mob decides to “close the loop", sending back Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (12)
After the opening twenty minutes, I was prepared for a futuristic variation on existential crime films along the lines of Le Samouraï. However, Rian Johnson directs with much less focus than the precise Melville. Thought the result doesn’t fall apart like The Brothers Bloom, the film still lacks a uniform style. Despite the absolutely serious and very impressive cutaways into the mechanised life of a hired assassin (though it somehow wasn’t clear to me why the targets aren’t sent back in time already dead), Looper also contains farcical black humour, a saccharine romance, brutal “Rambo” action and a bit of telekinesis for beginners (not to mention the very western-style final conflict on the street). Johnson switches not only between a lot of genres, but also between a lot of narrators. Though the narrative thus unfolds in an interesting way, it doesn’t ultimately lead to any surprising “convergence” into a unified point. The use of multiple points of view essentially only confirms the truth of my favourite line from The Rules of the Game: “The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.” I’m afraid that the attempt to apply Bordwell’s forking-path model of narration to the film, placing in front of us two human minds influencing each other instead of two time planes, would lead us up a blind alley (though I would like to have this assumption refuted by a second viewing). More important than the time paradoxes for Johnson are the moral dilemmas with which the characters are confronted and which force us to constantly assess the situation from an emotional perspective. To whom does the future belong? Where does the line between a wasted and fulfilled life lead? What right do we have to make decisions for others? Here the non-Hollywood-style desperate fatefulness appears again, but repackaged in a more familiar, family-melodrama wrapper. I believe that if Johnson had stuck with a short runtime, as was the original plan, Looper would have been a great film about which geeks would tweet enthusiastically from the whole known internet world. As it stands, however, it is a very imaginative film that is more about sense than sensibility in conflict with its dominant sci-fi genre. 80%
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A great premise, an interesting execution. Looper might not be perfect and it has a whole lot of holes, but on the other hand, it tries to be unconventional, original and quite unusual – successfully so. After all, it can’t be easy to come up with a time travel story, so stasis will probably always have one or twoholes in it. On the other hand, Gordon-Levitt, Willis, Blunt and Daniels are making up for it perfectly. The rather slow and difficult start is then saved by the story, which is unpredictable in each passing minute, even though it makes you think that it isn’t. And that’s basically the nitty-gritty. Looper is an excellent idea and I must tip my hat off to anyone who decides to pursue these kinds of ideas. It’s actually a suicide mission in a sense that you’ll either fall in love with or you’ll just get pissed off. And I must say that I am leaning towards the prior. And when it comes to Bruce Willis? He’s a sweetheart, finally a movie where his character has a purpose, even if he doesn’t speak as much as I’d like.
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A Terminator wannabe and the stupidest science fiction movie among the intelligent ones. Longwinded; after the opening few minutes completely without ideas; set in the future only for effect; it is shamefully superficial, it has no rules (neither for time travel nor the simple laws of action/reaction; for instance, the reason behind getting rid of people in such a complex, costly and uncertain way, which it later completely denies), but it has the most annoying child around... It wouldn't matter with a dumb popcorn action movie, but with a movie supposedly based on its "smartness", it makes you want to slap the filmmakers in the face. So there are precisely two pros; the opening quarter of an hour before the well of ideas dries out, and Willis’ dialog-less scene at the first meeting. Just disappointing. And yet it's the best non-action science fiction since Source Code. Which is darn sad.
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Looper is a solidly thought out and well-shot and narrated "semi-indie" sci-fi film, which actually only takes a proven foundation and adds nothing new to it. So if you've seen "time travel" classics like Donnie Darko or 12 Monkeys (or The Butterfly Effect and others), it will become clear to you in the middle of the film that someone who returns from the future to fix the past tends to find out that his actions are part of the events he seeks to prevent. And unfortunately, the film goes along these tracks without any surprises and any significant excitement. After a fairly fresh introduction, an overly sleepy passage comes in the second half, which tries to motivate the rebirth of the hero's younger self. It makes sense, it doesn't offend, but at the same time it's not a big deal - rather a solidly written conversation film. Johnson works a lot with the characters, less with the world, which is more so sketched out (one must wonder why it's full of trailer trash, why people are so disgusting to each other and why there is a Zen oasis on the other half of the globe). Willis' storyline brings more adrenaline, but also shallow poses, awkward action and love clichés. The two selves meet in an excellent scene in a bistro, but then they each go their down their own storylines until the loop closes. Looper confirms the trend of "intelligent genre films with a lower budget" (Source Code, The Adjustment Bureau, Moon, In Time), which surpass the mainstream with their ambition and authorial vision. But they almost always lack an essential piece in order to achieve perfection. Most likely the piece that would significantly disrupt the well-known genre rules - it is best described by Willis, who, when mentioning a complex time paradox, says something to his younger self in the sense of: "We would have to sit here overnight and draw on piles of napkins. Just believe that things are this way." In the end, the trap is not unlike the one in which their more expensive friends hang. [75%]
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The greatest strength of the rough futuristic junkyard is in the confident echo it leaves behind. It was running through my mind even long after I left the cinema, I kept thinking about the individual plot lines, and my joy is mostly spoiled by the fact that the more I ponder, the more logical inconsistencies and paradoxes I find. That said, thanks to the perfect casting with the unwavering Bruce Willis at the forefront, it is a joy to watch this genre mix. The sympathetically uncompromising form makes it easier to overlook the narrative errors. 70% and rounding up for Rian Johnson's undeniable courage.
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