Looper (Movie Review)

PRAISES:

This creative 2012 film starring Bruce Willis (Die Hard, 12 Monkeys), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, 500 Days of Summer), and Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, Sicario) goes into the new yet familiar territory of time travel. Once you get past the weird-looking prosthetics on Gordon-Levitt to make him look more like a younger Bruce Willis, this is a high-paced, well thought out, and enjoyable time-travel movie that does not fall at the plot-holes that many others of its sort do. It has a very original and unusual idea, even using themes and recurring symbols (which is very unusual these days).

PLOT:

Time travel is not invented yet but in 30 years it will be. In the future, gangs send the bodies of their victims back in time 30 years to be disposed of (because it is very hard to dispose of bodies in the future). This means the people in the now are disposing of a body that doesn’t exist, occasionally however, they must ‘close their own loop’. This means that their future-selves are sent back and they must kill them and dispose of their own body. When Joe ‘lets his loop run’ (fails to kill his future self) he must stop himself from hunting down a future crime boss.

PROBLEMS:

[SPOILER] When Joe is shot by Sara with rock salt he is hit in the right shoulder. In the next scene where Sara is treating him she is treating his left shoulder.

When Sara is smoking in bed, the length of the cigarette varies inconsistently between shots.

When Cid is answering multiplication questions with Sara and answers the 7×3 question for the 21 tile, which is then placed on the board, it disappears in the next shot, reappears in the following shot and disappears again in the next shot.

The crop on Sara’s farm is sugar cane, which grows in a hot humid climate like Louisiana, where the movie was filmed. Her farm is supposed to be in Kansas, where sugar cane isn’t grown.

POINTS:

Enjoyment: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Artistic Impression:🌟🌟🌟🌟

Overall:🌟🌟🌟🌟

PETTY TRIVIA:

1. Joseph Gordon-Levitt watched many Bruce Willis movies prior to working with him in order to adopt his mannerisms and act the younger version of him in the movie.
2. This is the third time Bruce Willis’ character has time traveled and encountered his younger self. The first two were Twelve Monkeys (1995) and The Kid (2000).
3. Some of the movie was originally going to be set in Paris but was moved to Shanghai for budgeting purposes.
4. Rian Johnson had been collecting ideas for the movie for 10 years.
5. The second of three films Emily Blunt was in about characters trying to change the future; the first was The Adjustment Bureau (2011), the third was Edge of Tomorrow (2014).

PANDA:

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276104/

Liked this? Check out my reviews of 12 Monkeys or Seasons 2-6 of Walking Dead + Who Died