Looper (2012)

So much average

Absolutely the worst movie.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

First of all, there was some attempt to make an original time travel film here. Secondly, it was well-acted by everyone in the cast, including the child actors. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were great choices for the hardened, older and brash, younger versions of the same man. It is well scored, and well directed. Sadly, this cannot save a film that has a hastily written plot just to make a time travel film.The central premise of the film, that in the future time travel is used to send people back in time to be assassinated because it is impossible to dispose of bodies, is immediately flawed when you realise they could just send the dead body back in time and directly into a furnace, cutting out the middleman. This is particularly of note when we see gangsters actually kill a civilian in the future, indicating they're more than happy to do the deed just to keep their operations silent and that they more than likely kill just as many in the future as they send back. So again, why bother with time travel, especially seeing as the film emphasises that time travel is especially illegal?!The actual mechanisms of time travel seem to be as confused as the reasons for it as well. It spends a lot of time setting up that when someone travels into the past, changes to the past only catch up with them once they pass the point when the change physically occurs. There is one scene making this gruesomely clear, in which a young looper is dismembered as his older self falls apart on the street outside. This is later reinforced with Bruce Willis' memories. This raises another fundamental question with the plot: why did the Rainmaker rise to power on account of his rough upbringing before Bruce Willis travelled back in time to cause his rough upbringing? In Willis' future, he shot his older self as a young man and never went near the farm, meaning the Rainmaker would not exist, at least not as a hardened criminal. He would have no one to stop upon travelling to the past, and would not have even had his loop closed since the Rainmaker was the one closing the loops. As a side note on the same topic, why did he vanish when Gordon-Levitt shot himself? As established earlier, he should have simply turned into a corpse!These weren't the only two issues I had with the plot, but they were the two that really crippled it for me. The earlier throwaway line about telekinesis seemed like forced foreshadowing in hindsight, but at least didn't create plot holes. There were other issues, but I've already written too much! 5/10

Why don't the mob send the people to a single place, like a warehouse owned by the mob in the 'present' and deal with them in bulk? That would reduce the needed labor force greatly. Why do the loopers have to finish their own future versions? To invite unnecessary complications or so that there can be a movie about it? Why 30 years? Aren't future loopers a threat to the mob 29 years 11 months from 'now'? I've watched the first 15 minutes and the movie is garbage in terms of story. Acting, directing, atmosphere bla bla... So it got a 3 from me instead of 1. The idea itself is fundamentally flawed even after you are ready to accept the idea of time travel.

I went to see Looper when it came out in Finland, and I was in love with it since then. I've always liked the idea of the story. It's complicated in the way time travelling stories are always complicated. Still the plot is mostly straight forward and it's clear what people want. Also it's brutal just in the right way.Of course if you're serious about the time travel aspect, sometimes the time travel paradox doesn't seem to make awful lot of sense, but if you're just in it for an action thriller then you're going to be fine.One of the weirdest things in this movie is to see Joseph Gordon Levitt look like Bruce Willis. Like he pulls that off, and it's not completely awful, but it just look odd. You could've made that happen some other way too, not just make JGL copy Bruce Willis completely... I'm usually not a big fan of science fiction, but when it comes to only small doses of science fiction, I might love it. With Looper the only doses of sci-fi are the time travel element and the telekinetic abilities possessed by some of the characters. Even if time travelling is a key element in the story, it doesn't make the story feel too futuristic. The weapons look pretty regular and there are only few futuristic looking vehicles in the world. This makes it possible for the story not explain the world too much. It looks and works pretty much like ours apart from the few details that are explained very clearly. It's not necessarily only a good thing: you might want to know more about the world, but you can't. You can only see the slightly dystopian aspect on how there are clearly wealthier people partying and then there's so much poverty on the streets and all that.If I absolutely hate something about this movie it's the sound mixing. Sometimes watching this movie is painful because the characters talk quietly but then there's all that action noises and shouting... It's easier if you have subtitles on, then you don't have to blast the movie on full volume. I often stop paying attention to it, but there's that one diner scene where I always pay attention to it, it's just super annoying.It's always a risk to rewatch a movie you used to like 5-6 years back, because you might ruin it, but also can you be neutral in reviewing it if you already like it? The thing about Looper is that while it's a good action movie, watching it too many times doesn't make it good, unfortunately. It's still alright, and there are still some scenes that are breath-taking, but everything between those few amazing scenes feels dull.

The idea of this movie is incredible, also execution of it, in fact, everything with this film it's amazing.Starting with the concept, I never saw something like that in other media, maybe there is something like that, but unless, I didn't now any, so the movie improve even more.Some movies has amazing ideas, but fail on the execution. That's not the case here. The structure of it works since the beginning, when the editing is use to explain in a gradual way all the things that you need to know, while set some pieces that will be very useful in the future. Amazing script, amazing direction, amazing editing.The cast is terrific too. Joseph Gordon-Levitt simply destroys in the main role, I think I never had seeing him on a action role (or something like that) so it was a very good surprise for me. Bruce Willis is awesome too, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, you know, the cast is fantastic. Another performance that deserves to be honor is the little kid, Pierce Gagnon, who plays Cid. Every time that he spoke I was like "WOW", you know, there's no big deal about the role, but he is thinking to sound like a little genius guy, and it works very well! He had like 8 years at the time? Less? I don't know, but really impress me. Well, and this is another point to the directing of Rian Johnson, good performance of the whole cast, almost always has the "finger" of a good director.Maybe the only thing that someone can say about the movie is some "cliches" that it may fall into. Like, you know that "Blue Kid" will do some dumb thing and screw up in some point, you get very fast too that the kid is the rainmaker, but come on! It's fine, it's almost impossible do some kind of film, book or anything else without something like that, it's impossible be 100% unpredictable this days, and besides that, I was always thinking that I knew what is going too happening next, but I almost always was wrong.In short, Looper is a fantastic movie, I can't recommend you more too see it. And OMG I'm EVEN MORE EXCITED FOR THE LAST JEDI NOW! But seriously, I'm can't wait to see more of Rian Johnson's movies, this was my first one, and I'm already a fan.9,5/10