Hype can be a dangerous thing. The posters and trailers for
Looper were covered in lashings of
quotes about how brilliant it is and studded with stars in clusters of four and
five. One critic's hyperbolic review even suggested that it was "the new
Matrix". With a build-up like that,
how could the film possibly disappoint me!
In hindsight, perhaps it was always going to disappoint me.
That's not to say that the film's bad, it's certainly not. It's good. But
that's all it is: good.
Joe (Joseph-Gordon-Levitt) is an eponymous Looper: an
assassin hired by criminals living in the future to kill people they send back
in time and then dispose of their bodies. He lives in Kansas in 2044. They live
in 2074 when time travel has been invented and, according to his boss Abe (Jeff
Daniels), who has moved permanently from the future to run the looper
operation, it is apparently advantageous to know Mandarin. Loopers are paid in
silver bars strapped to the people that are sent back in time for them to kill,
except for when they are released from their service and gold bars are strapped
to their future selves. After killing themselves, they have a few decades to
live as they please before their future self is abducted and sent back in time
for their past self to kill. Failure to kill your future self is punishable by
death and is brutally enforced. Everything's going fine until a mysterious
figure in the future called "the Rainman" decides to start having all of the loopers kill themselves off. After Joe fails to kill his future self (Bruce Willis),
the two go on the run from Abe's goons whilst trying to solve the mystery of
who the Rainmaker is and why he is shutting the looper programme down.
The film, to its credit, doesn't get into complex
metaphysical discussions of the inner workings of time travel and give us a
conversation we've already seen and had many times before. In a scene in a
diner, Future Joe tells Present Joe that it makes his head hurt and the younger
man drops the subject. It also presents an interesting argument: that if your
future self came back in time and told you to change your actions, you'd
probably carry on and do what you thought was right anyway. Still, for pleasing
moments like those, there are some very dumb ones as well. Particularly, the
fact that in the future time travel has been banned and is operated only by
crime lords who use it to dispose of their victims. Joe gives us some reason
about people in the future being "chipped" and the film brushes it
off, but it's not a satisfying explanation and makes you really wonder what's
going on with these gangs that possess incredibly complex and illegal
technology like time travel, but haven't mastered the art of surgically
removing tracking chips or throwing bodies in the ocean à la Dexter Morgan. Furthermore, requiring
loopers to kill themselves presents myriad problems and results in both Joe and
a looper friend of his (Paul Dano) failing to kill themselves. The much simpler
idea of loopers at the end of their contract receiving a pile of gold bars and
their future self being sent to a different looper to be killed apparently went over the
heads of the criminals from the future.
After the two Joes meet, the younger man fails to kill
himself. They later meet in a diner and Future Joe tells Present Joe that
someone called "the Rainmaker" is killing off the loopers and he's
going to find out who he is and kill him as a child. After the diner they're
meeting at is attacked by Abe's men, Present Joe nearly gets caught and ends up
hiding at a farm owned by Sara (Emily Blunt), who lives with her young son, Cid
(Pierce Gagnon).
Some parts of the film may feel superfluous but turn out to
play a necessary part in the film, namely Joe's stripper friend and lover Suzie
(Piper Perabo) and the mutation that affects one tenth of the world's
population and gives them the power to make small objects like coins and
cigarette lighters levitate. Both of these feel like pointless plot additions
when they come up but don't pass them off as such. Instead, there are plenty of
other pointless characters - Kid Blue (Noah Segan), an incompetent employee of
Abe who more than outstays his welcome and Future Joe's wife (Xu Qing), who
serves only to highlight that the film has serious problems with plot holes. Additionally,
the main problem is that the film pretty much comes to a grinding halt just
over half way through. When Present Joe arrives at Sara's farm, he decides to
hide there while Future Joe does his thing and spends most of the rest of the
film hiding and talking to Sara and her son and, quite frankly, it's a bit
boring.
In contrast with a fantastic first act full of action, great
visuals and effective storytelling, the second act sees the film going round in
circles, like Present Joe lost in Sara's corn field. It apes The Terminator as Future Joe tries to change the world and Present Joe hides out with a woman and
develops feelings for her. If you've seen that film, you should be able to see
the "twist" that arrives in this one. When the third act rolls
around, director Rian Johnson throws in a couple of shootouts and tries to
cobble things together but the damage has already been done. The resolution is
different but still feels unsatisfying. I'd like to see if there's an alternate
ending provided with the DVD release.
Plot holes, logical inconsistencies and a rambling middle
section detract from interesting ideas and good performances. Jeff Bridges in
particular is very good and Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a decent Bruce Willis
impression. It's just a pity the two share so little screen time after their
meeting in the diner.
It's not the new Matrix
but it's better than both of that film's sequels put together. An infuriating
case of what might have been.
7 out of 10.
