Review: Looper (2012)

Looper is a film that had been recommended to me for some time by my friends.  I finally just got around to watching it, after nearly a year.  And while most people had good (and sometimes even great) things to say about the flick, I found it to be rather unimpressive.  Despite the reigning rating of 93/87 at Rotten Tomatoes, I couldn’t see myself ever wanting to sit down and watch this one a second time.

The movie pits Bruce Willis against Joseph Gordon-Levitt, both of them playing the same guy, Joe.  Bruce is the future version and Joseph is the version in the present.  The premise is that Joe is a “looper”, a person who hangs out, kills people and disposes of the bodies in the present because forensic science in the future is super-powered and impossible to get around.

Joe’s job is pretty simple.  He waits for a person to get teleported to him from the future, shoots them and then makes a ton of cash.  But each looper only has a limited contract and after 30 years of them being let go from their jobs, they are eliminated (for some reason that is only vaguely explained in the movie).  The way they are eliminated is also very puzzling, since the future them is sent back to be killed by the past them (which seems like the absolutely worst way to do things to me).

Joe screws up and doesn’t kill his target when he realizes that it’s himself.  The Bruce version gets away and runs around hunting down children to kill.  Why?  Because one of them will grow up to be a powerful criminal that will kill his wife inadvertently.  Along the journey, there are chases and some mysteries and the two versions of Joe must both fight each other and save each other periodically.  The people that Joe works for are also coming after him since he screwed up.  Finally, the two Joes battle for the life of some telekinetic kid who will supposedly grow up and cause major death in the world (exactly how and why is never fully explained).  In the end, Joe learns an important moral lesson and stops being a dick for one second.

While the atmosphere and world of the film is great, as is the acting, the rest of the film falls far short.  The action is some of the worst I’ve seen in a while.  Seriously, everyone in this film who picks up a gun besides Joe instantly becomes more incompetent than a drunken stormtrooper.  Both Joes carve a path through their enemies without batting an eyelid.

The main flaw with the flick is the huge pile of plot holes.  By the end of the flick, I found myself loaded with things I wanted to know about the story but the writers never saw fit to explain any of them.  Instead, the movie glosses over many important parts and uses ham-fisted set-ups to make characters do what needs to be done.  For the first 20 minutes, the movie is great.  After that, it implodes upon itself exponentially.  Even the moral lesson is more annoying than meaningful, since by the time it arrives the movie has already pushed our suspension of disbelief out of a window and to its death.  Worse yet, it’s not the time travel that kills it; it’s all the stuff that should be relatively easy to explain.

Again, some people loved this film.  Me, I’d give it a B-rating at best.  It is fun for people who happen to be Bruce Willis fans, however, as the film makes subtle references to many other flicks.  You can head to tvtropes if you wish and find a list of them all.  If you like Bruce Willis and aren’t that picky, check it out.  If popular opinion is to be believed, you’ll probably like it.  Me, I’ll avoid this one from here on out.

Looper courtesy of collider.com