Looper - Movie Review

[shadowkat]

Saw Looper finally on DVD last night. Quite pleased that I didn't bother paying $13 dollars to see it in the movie theater and waited to get it courtesy of netflix. (Although, considering it took me three weeks to get around to seeing it...might as well have spent that amount.)

While it has some interesting special effects and a fascinating premise, overall the basic story has been done to death by now and it was disappointing and over-hyped. Reminded me a great deal of Inception actually, with some of the same problems - great concept, interesting execution, boring script.

The story is about a hit man or looper, named Joe in the year 2044. This future world is run by organized crime lords, and inhabited by vagrants, drug-addicted hitmen, call girls, and people with TK. The TK's can only float quarters or so we are told. In the not too distant future, time travel is invented then outlawed, except for organized crime lords who use it to kill people they don't like by sending the guy back in time to be executed by a looper. The guy or gal is tied up, a hood put over their head, sliver bars on their back and sent back. The looper kills them. Collects the silver and deposes of the unknown body. Then sometime down the line, the Looper's contract is terminated...when his loop is closed, ie - the older version is sent back in time for him to kill. Things are going hunky-dory, until suddenly without warning everyone's loops are closed. Apparently some guy named the Rainmaker - has come on the scene and manipulated the crime lords of the future to close everyone's loops. Joe's loop is closed, but his older self escapes him and goes after the Rain-maker, who is a ten year old kid at this point in time and not really hurting anyone, with the aim to kill the kid before he grows up to be the evil monster that takes his life away from him. (Keep in mind - old Joe is a cold-blooded killer, so how evil can the Rainmaker really be if he is killing off former cold-blooded killers like Joe?)

Now, you'd think this would provide lots of interesting scenes between Young Joe and Old Joe. Or a commentary on memory and how it can change or how going back in time changes our future and not necessarily in a way we'd like. But no. It's a standard noir action film about motherly love and self-sacrifice. In short, Inception Take II - lots of pointless and gratiutious violence and not enough story.

Also once again it underlines all the problems I have with Time Travel movies and books - which is they never really address the problematic nature of time travel or the physics and the temporal anomalies caused - ie. if you pull this small thread you unravel the whole tapestry or story. People who write these tales seem to be too limited in their focus and don't realize every little choice we make effects everything like skipping stones across a pound. (Ray Bradbury's The Sound of Thunder got this bit across quite well.) The only series that addressed this was LOST. Also Star Trek sort of did. But here...it just doesn't quite work. It feels a bit too similar to Back to the Future/The Butterfly Effect...in some respects and not enough like The Sound of Thunder - that short story by Ray Bradbury. In short - I saw all the plot holes in the structure.

The acting, direction and visual special effects are good, the story just is a bit on the lame side of the fence in the whole been there, done that fifty million times already can't we come up with something new already mode. And seriously, if you are going to play with time travel - please think about the science of it for ten seconds.

Can see why this one faded from memory at award time. Sad that Bruce Willis thinks this is the best movie he's ever done. I personally thought Twelve Monkey's was more interesting.

Overall rating? B-

Comments

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I agree that Looper can't hold a candle to 12 Monkeys (that was brilliant), but I liked it way better than Inception (which was so boring). Time travel movies are hard to do.... At least I got a few laughs out of Looper.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Odd, it didn't seem funny to me. I didn't laugh at all during it. Had some interesting special effects though. But I liked Inception's cinematography better. Was admittedly a simpler story than Inception, with a lot less going on and as a result more emotionally accessible.

[ETA: Ugh, could of sworn I wrote didn't not did that first time around...stupid brain. Oh well, at least I can edit.]

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

Whenever I read or watch a science-fiction story that involves time travel, I pretty much tend to ignore the science aspects and concentrate on the story, and especially the characters. While I do occasionally cringe if the writers do some patently stupid or illogical thing with the "science", for the most part it's good to keep in mind that some concepts can be represented with mathematics that are either unlikely, or flat-out impossibilities in the corporal world we exist in.

I tend to think that time is one of these things. Values for it show up in equations, like infinity or imaginary numbers, but that's the only place they exist. Infinity, for example, is the largest number possible, but then what happens if you write the statement infinity + 1?

Anyway, I personally adhere to the concept that time does not exist in the sense that it is something one could physically travel forward or backward in. Nevertheless, I dearly love the Sarah Conner Chronicles, a story that really has little to do with time travel and everything to do with what happens when humans create a sentient being that turns out to be superior to themselves-- and find out that it doesn't regard them as its god.

Or of course, lots and lots of other fascinating things. The time travel is just the phlebotinum, and in that aspect is perfectly acceptable. (Or, much like the "magic" in Once Upon A Time).

I haven't had a chance to see Looper yet, but you're absolutely right-- an involving story is everything.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm willing to suspend disbelief - Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator flicks worked for me, as did to a degree Back to the Future.

But Looper feels like the writer got more interested in atmosphere and less in story or character. The characters were rather stock, not much there, and stereotypical. All the emphasis was on the world - like watching a video game. And even the sci-fi element of time travel wasn't really explored so much as used as a gimmick, while in Sarah Connor, Lost, Back to the Future - it is explored in depth and does change the characters and affects them. Not just a plot device.

Looper reminded me a little of a video game.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Too bad you didn't enjoy it! I thought it was one of the more fun and inventive movies of the summer. I thought the world-building was really good, all the little touches of cars retro-fitted with solar panels, the clothing and the slang. It felt very Blade Runner but in its own way. Time travel is always a bit disappointing because it feels like we're headed for some grand twist that unifies everything but it never works out that way. I was ok with this one and intrigued by the little details, like the identity of Kid Blue for instance.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Kid Blue?

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

The young constantly screwing up enforcer. There was a lot of speculation as to whether he was Jeff Bridges' character's younger self.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Didn't quite work...since Jeff Bridges and he shared the screen. And Kid Blue didn't seem to know he was Gateman. No - don't see that at all.
Nothing supports it.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Nothing supports it.

Pistols at dawn!

;)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Make it lightsabers at midnight...and I'm in. ;-)