Looper

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. (10/11/2012)

With Looper, Rain Johnson was successful where Duncan Jones, with Source Code, and Andrew Niccol with, In Time, failed: making, on a low budget, an original and ambitious sci-fi movie that is also fun, smart and without major gaps of logic. Some people may not agree with the last observation (judging by the fairly numerous negative comments), but I believe Looper avoids those time travelling illogical paradoxes actually because it never explains exactly how time travel works in its universe. Source Code tries to explain it, but it doesn’t make much sense. Looper just waves its hand at that, saying that “it’s a complicated mess”, and doesn’t bother with explaining anything. I liked that. (Spoiler) But I hear those cries. If Willis, coming from the future, killed the kid’s mum, he would turn him into the dangerous villain that made Willis come back from the future, and that doesn’t make sense, because in the reality to which Willis returns, nothing like that happened. Yeah, yeah, I see the joy of those smartasses that finally found one gap in logic, and to show it off, they say that Looper is bullshit. But this film doesn’t work with such direct causality. The course of events in the climax, which result in the kid’s becoming a villain, is just one of many ways it could have happened. Different paths lead to the same outcome, many different paths lead to a probable outcome, a few different paths lead to an improbable outcome. And that’s the way Looper’s universe work, with “probability”, and it says so a couple of times, for instance, in the conversation in the diner. It’s still a bit of a mess, though, but it’s clear that, by not dealing with precise rules, the creators want to rely on something else, emotions. And I think that it works. (End of spoiler). So, that is it. In my opinion, Looper is not too far from being a truly acclaimed work. It’s original to a certain extent, fantastically made, well acted, smartly written and quite nasty towards its characters; uncompromising sci-fi. How many are there? (10/19/2012)

Bruce Willis is able to time travel much better that this (hello 12 Monkeys). Looper is another one of those new sci-fi films (Moon, Source Code, In Time...) where it's nice to see that they can get by without a huge budget and that they can raise the hopes of genre lovers that they'll be original and fresh... But that's the end of it. In this case I liked the initial idea, the technical execution and both actors (Joseph Gordon-Levitt handled the role of Bruce Willis quite well, he wasn't even very ridiculous), but the rest wasn't worth much. Continually stupid and illogical, the clichéd passage on the farm makes me want to kill someone, and worst of all was the ending, in which - SPOILER - the hero died, but his inner voice kept on talking. (02/25/2013)

At last a proper sci-fi. The nutritious story wrings everything it can from the topic of time travel. Rian Johnson first sketches the basic premise, then later enriching it with other added value and manages not to lose his way. Bruce is on best form (in terms of action and acting) and Joe just confirms his place as one of today’s best young actors, even under a thick layer of makeup. And moreover we have the incredibly well-cast kid who is a pest, a bit of a psycho, but still you find yourself rooting for him at least a little. The low budget turned the year 2044 into a horrible urban cesspit or an empty field in Kansas. This gives the picture the proper atmosphere where everything is more or less... gray. Anyone who compares this with Terminator was just stupidly concentrating on Willis’s storyline, while this movie isn’t really about him and don’t think you’ll get 12 Monkeys here, Looper has a long way to go to get to that. In any case, I want to watch this again soon. (10/11/2012)

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. (06/28/2013)