Looper

In prehistoric times, when I was a boy reading Anderson's "Annals of the Time Patrol," I wondered how difficult it is to write (or shoot) sci-fi with time travel themes and not fall into the trap of a time paradox that has the ability to turn the story into an absurd farce. However, the problem of a time paradox is not what makes Looper unbearable in my eyes. Johnson's film is a typical summer blockbuster, which doesn't worry about illogical slip-ups in the script or rushed and bizarre relationship building. It offers potentially interesting themes, but it processes them or barely touches on them in a superficial way. The directing is routine and so is Bruce Willis' performance, which functions as a worn-out template for action heroes. Twelve Monkeys once proved that it is possible to create a smart, cultivated, and entertaining genre film about such a difficult-to-grasp phenomenon as time travel. In comparison to Gilliam's film, Looper is quite a bit worse. Overall impression: 40%. (02/05/2022)

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)

Complicated, narratively muddled, and considerably unpolished. The director didn't even understand the basic thing that if you have a low-budget sci-fi film, you can't afford panoramic shots or city and traffic scenes, because if in 2044 you see a Toyota Yaris driving on the road, that's probably not entirely right. Only the smaller role of Emily Blunt and the excellently stylized Joseph Gordon-Levitt are good, he perfectly captures not only the appearance of a young Bruce Willis, but also his facial expressions and delivers great looks and lines precisely in his younger style, and it works great. Not a timeless film for sure, not very high-quality either, rather unusual, perhaps, but that's not enough. (01/20/2013)

The greatest strength of the rough futuristic junkyard is in the confident echo it leaves behind. It was running through my mind even long after I left the cinema, I kept thinking about the individual plot lines, and my joy is mostly spoiled by the fact that the more I ponder, the more logical inconsistencies and paradoxes I find. That said, thanks to the perfect casting with the unwavering Bruce Willis at the forefront, it is a joy to watch this genre mix. The sympathetically uncompromising form makes it easier to overlook the narrative errors. 70% and rounding up for Rian Johnson's undeniable courage. (10/24/2012)

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)