This is a film I really wanted to see in cinemas but my friends constantly fucked me around and then ended up going without me, cunts. I have more schlock to review, don't you worry but I was so excited for this film and this is the first time I've been able to get a hold of it. So I hope you enjoy!
Set in 2044 in Kansas, in Loopers' universe time travel will exist in thirty years but is immediately outlawed, although this doesn't stop the criminals from using it. They create an entirely new job out if, a 'Looper'. A Looper is an assassin in the present, who is sent people the criminals want to wack in the future. They can't simply wack them in the future because of tagging, apparently. A twist on all this, is that time travel is so illegal, the criminals can't even have the Loopers knowing about it, so if they are still alive in thirty years when time travel is invented/discovered, they send them back to be wacked as well. This is called, 'Closing Your Loop', which is why a Looper is called a Looper in the first place. Our protagonist, Joe, eventually has to close his own loop, only no one warned him and he is such a badass thirty years from now, he takes his past self by surprise and fucks up time as we know it. Eventually future and present Joe have to team up and save the future from the Rainmaker but really present Joe is happy to just kill future Joe and get on with his life. And the way it all comes together, it's so clever I don't even want to spoil it.
It's difficult to draw the line in this film between simply some fantastically written characters and some fantastically portrayed characters. Our protagonist, Present Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt for example, was a character I really enjoyed. Often Hollywood films like to present their protagonists as Paladin levels of goodness as to not alienate a mainstream audience who would be confused by a morally ambiguous protagonist and the question of whether to root for them or not. Joe isn't like that, I mean don't get me wrong there are still mainstream shackles in place, he is still obviously a good guy but he makes certain choices throughout the films run time that drop more into the morally grey, selfish decision area that made him feel that much more human and the film never forgets once or fails to remind us that Joe is a drug using criminal.That being said probably the most fascinating character is Future Joe portrayed by probably the strongest actor in the film, Bruce Willis. He has the most interesting arc to deal with, it's dark, twisted, morally grey and leaves the audience so very torn on his character and Willis really conveys the highs and lows beautifully, I can imagine the audience largely mirroring his every expression. It is not an easy character arc he has to portray and one that doesn't have much glory either, but he puts himself into it 100%. Also what is interesting about his character is whatever Present Joe does changes Future Joe because they are rewriting time, so it's interesting to see both what happens to Future Joe and also how he portrays it.
But then there are other highlights too, when Emily Blunt turned up midway through the film I rolled my eyes and cynically thought, 'oh yeah I forgot all Hollywood films need a love interest' and although that statement wasn't proven to be wrong completely, her character 'Sara' turned out to be really fascinating, with a surprising amount of depth. She had a lot more to her than 'forced love interest', so I enjoyed her a lot more than most female side characters in other recent films.The cinematography in Looper is great, you forget just how beautiful even mainstream films can be when you spend so much time watching B-Movie shit. There is fantastic use of close ups, some interesting use of slow motion, some really clever framing and obviously both Yedlin and director Rian Johnson love the noir genre. It may not be the next Blade Runner, an all time favourite of mine, but I was getting real Blade Runner vibes at times. And it's through all these little details that Steve Yedlin captures and Johnson controls, that really makes Looper feel like a living, breathing world. I never thought I'd see a future more believable than the one in Children of Men, but I found it here. The soundtrack is used really cleverly too, I don't often talk about soundtracks because they usually wash right over me but here the music really does blend beautifully with the visuals and works to both give the music more punch and to make the visuals pop.
And of course none of this could work without Ed Verreaux's fantastic production design. 2012 really was the year where CGI actually started to become believable and after watching so much shit, I forgot just how great special effects could be. Yeah JGL's face looks pretty stupid but everything else looks fantastic, it's a gory future that looks so real you could reach out and touch it. There is one sequence, where a guy in the future is receiving the scars by what is happening to himself in the present and my God, it looks so convincing it's enough to give you nightmares.I really enjoyed how much fun the film had with its own internal concepts too. It really is a film that seems almost completely concerned with having fun and being as cool as possible, even with how dark this film can get in places. Sure, as with all time travel narratives, things can get a little confused if you think on them too long but Looper actively admits the flaws and holes that come with the time travel genre and will be with it until the end of time. Or until time travel really exists so we can test it all out and find out how it works, I suppose. Looper had enough of its surface realised to hide a lot of the holes that hid beneath and play around with what it does have.
The great visuals and direction really come together in the action sequences, it's just a shame there aren't more of them. It's brutal, visceral, so very gory and doesn't need a camera being thrashed around to capture a sense of thrill, it does it on its own. There is a nice mixture too of gun fights, fist fights and other sci-fi playing around. And those TK sequences man, wow...If I was going to have any real problems with the film, I think I'd probably complain about how restrained the whole film feels. Made for thirty million, marketed as an action film and yet it isn't really. I mean sure it gets more action heavy in the third act but so does pretty much every film ever, really whenever the film feels like it's going to finally explode, it just doesn't. Looper is an hour and a half of raising tension that largely deflates in the end.
It'd be easy to confuse this film with being slow, even boring at times, I mean it isn't either of those things in my mind but it is just left feeling so pedestrian because it chose to play Looper more as a drama, rather than take the obvious action route it could have taken, the obvious action route it seemed to be heading for. I have no real problem with this in itself, but I spent pretty much the whole film waiting for the explosion it seemed to hint was coming and found it never came, despite it seemingly teasing at it the whole way through the films run time, especially so in the final act. This ultimately harms the final product, I know it doesn't have to be an action film, but as the action its hinting at never really comes to a head properly it can make the film feel somewhat bloated and overlong. All that set up would have made perfect sense for a huge conclusion but the conclusion was so oddly muted, it could have been confused with a low budget indie sci-fi instead.I understand with a narrative like this there is a fair amount of information you need to convey to the audience before you can get on with things and Johnson revels in how detailed he can make his vision of the future but it often at times feels like too much is being crammed in, despite it being two hours long which should be more than enough time to explore a lot of content. The film never seems to ever reach a sense of fluidity, it jerks around largely from start to finish.
And I don't want to make my readers roll their eyes and take away from this that all I wanted was just another mindless action film but it's hard to really explain. I have nothing against intelligent Sci-Fi, Primer is one of my favourite films ever, even if I don't understand it to this day, but Looper is an intelligent sci-fi drama as played as an action film, only the action never actually comes properly. Well aside a few sequences dotted in, probably to stop the mainstream audience members from nodding off. Including a narrative roaring like a speeding locomotive as a back drop to what amounts to a largely plodding drama creates this odd conflict of interest as the narrative demands urgency and the actual stuff on screen seems quite happy to take its time. And I mean don't get me wrong for most of the film you're being so swept up in it all you don't really notice but it's almost incredible just how much you learn by the end and just how little happens in relation to the sheer volume of information being thrown at us.So do I recommend it? I'm left feeling so torn on Looper. I mean don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed it. One of the best films of 2012, no doubt, but I can't ignore the restrained nature of the film. For those coming for an action, sci-fi thrill ride, you may as well go back for another watch of the Terminator franchise or Blade Runner because the marketing for Looper has lied to you. For those who enjoy intelligent, sci-fi dramas and can look past a narrative screaming in your face but moving at a snails pace then you'll find a lot to love here. The film itself obviously cares a lot about the sci-fi genre and that really bleeds through. I really enjoyed it, overall.
Think About It!
-Locke, the world's worst film snob.
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