Looper - Movie Review
1"Looper" (2012) written and directed by Rian Johnson is an unexpectedly hardcore sci-fi. But like most Rian Johnson films, it believes it's way more clever than it actually is.
Time travel is not possible yet but it will be in 30 years. Mafia from the future have difficulties disposing of bodies so they hire people called Loopers from the past to execute and dispose of targets for them. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of these Loopers and he is faced with a moral dilemma when he has to shoot his future self. Old Joe (Bruce Willis) escapes his executioner to hunt down and kill a little boy who has great telekinetic powers who will kill his future wife.
Looper is a well acted and fairly interesting sci=fi action film. I appreciated how dark and gritty it could get, as Bruce Willis' character straight up has no issue point blank executing innocent children in plain view for the audience which is a pretty rare thing for American Hollywood films. Bruce Willis is particularly amazing in this film too and I would call it one of his best roles in his career. While it's not my favorite sci-fi universe, it is undoubtedly interesting and the story is overall quite engaging; I also approved of the bitter sweet ending.
Looper does fail in the key areas Rian Johnson always fails at though. The film is far too pretentious and full of itself; it's a slow burn that takes extremely long to get to the point and when it does, it has the audacity to call itself superior to other films in a somewhat fourth wall breaking joke reference to how stale films have become. I agree Looper is unique and cool, but if you could take a chill pill and be more humble I might be able to respect you more. Some additional things which bothered me were how irrelevant telekinesis ends up being to the actual main story itself, the gratuitous nudity and forced sex scene between Joe & Sara (Emily Blunt), and the illogical and inexplicable fact of why they are equipped with antique weaponry as opposed to sci-fi / future stuff . . . I mean we even see that common motorbikes are hovercrafts now, so why on Earth are the Loopers using inaccurate blunderbusses?
Looper is good but it needs to take a step back and think more critically of itself. If you are going to act so high and mighty you need to be above basic level mistakes.
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