Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Rian Johnson
Quick Impressions:
Looper ends at exactly the right moment, leaving things open for the inevitable sequel, Looper 2: A Whole Can of Worms.
Seriously, I’ve loved Emily Blunt since The Devil Wears Prada and thought it was a terrible shame contractual obligations prevented her from playing The Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (though Scarlet Johansson is great in the role). For years now, I’ve been watching Blunt’s career with interest, long enough to feel suspicious of every project she accepts at this point.
I first heard about Looper a long time ago and thought it sounded doomed. But not until a few months ago did I learn that the film was a passion project long awaited by star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and writer/director Rian Johnson who first directed Gordon-Levitt in his break-out indie hit Brick.
I really need to quit prejudging big budget action films based on leaked premises and terrible previews. I’m not a fan of mindless copycat movies churned out by studios in order to make a buck. But now I’m starting to wonder if I overestimate how many of those exist. I was wrong about John Carter (which turned out to be a passion project for Andrew Stanton) and I was wrong about Looper. A passion project by a director who first made an impression with a small indie film is a far cry from soulless studio money grubbing. For the past month or so, I’ve been actively excited to see the movie.
My husband reminded me the other day that Brick was the first “art film” we saw as a couple. (I introduced him to “art films” and he introduced me to “football.” I put “football” in quotations because that’s all I knew about the sport before meeting my husband.) For the record, we both liked Brick but thought it was a tiny bit too contrived (not a bad movie, just not my favorite, though Lukas Haas was fantastic. Who would have guessed the cute little kid from Witness would grow up to be so deliciously creepy?)
Well, Looper is better than Brick. It’s probably the best sci-fi movie I’ve seen all year. (I suppose the other contender for that honor is Prometheus, which aims higher but concludes sloppily.) Does the plot actually make sense? Well, it makes sense at the time.
Has anyone ever made a time travel movie free from plot holes and disorienting ambiguity? You might get confused trying to sort out all the details on the car ride home, but as the action unfolds, Looper wisely keeps the audience engaged and focused on following the plot.
The Good:
This will sound like insane praise at first, but Looper actually reminds me of Hamlet. I’m not comparing it in terms of quality. I just couldn’t help thinking how much Looper owes to an entire era of time-traveling sci-fi plots ushered in by films like The Terminator. In the same way, Hamlet came late to the party of Elizabethan revenge tragedies. It wasn’t offering a ghost who demanded vengeance as a novel idea. Ghosts had been asking heroes to avenge their deaths on stage for decades by the time Shakespeare joined the party. The new idea in Hamlet was that for the first time, the protagonist wondered if he actually ought to commit murder based on the dubious advice of an alleged ghost.
Looper’s like that, too, a reflective, character drama that seems to have grown out of someone’s philosophical meditation on action movies like The Terminator. Give audiences (full of creative kids) stuff like The Terminator, and thirty years later, you get stuff like Looper. (Unless Rian Johnson travels back in time to close his own loop in 1984. Then, I guess we won’t have stuff like Looper anymore. Or will we? Better end this discussion here.)
Looper is a very thoughtful film and actually has something to say—not about time travel, of course (unless the message is that it’s better left to scientists. Don’t get into a time machine with Rian Johnson whatever you do. The entire fabric of space-time will be ripped to shreds!) Trying to think through the logistics and the ramifications of the time travel will make your brain hurt, and you’ll probably just end up getting mad. After all, Bruce Willis’s character himself thought it was preferable to go around shooting children when given the alternative of thinking about the time travel. It’s really problematic, messy, and confusing. Save yourself the headache and get invested in the characters instead.
I came away from Looper feeling like I’d just watched a movie that was more about spirituality than science. It made me think of reincarnation and Purgatory and a spiritual journey of purgation and progress.
So much of the movie is about rescuing and saving people versus hunting down and killing people. But at the end of the movie, there is only one person who has actually been saved (if you want to call it that). I’ll avoid spoilers, but tonally, Looper feels a lot like a ghost story where the ghost isn’t dead. Yet. (Basically just plug time travelers into the ghost parts. If we can change the past, agonizing over past mistakes need not take place after death.)
The amazingly dynamic character of Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis) gets an astonishing (and really unusual) amount of development (especially considering that the movie is only two hours long). Maybe having two of him in play at once helps make that possible. I do think it’s interesting that what happens with Seth (and the decision Joe makes about it) influences both Joes but seems to set them off in opposite directions. It’s like Joe needs two tries to decide how to deal with the remorse of the decision he makes there. That’s probably what fascinates me most about the movie. Early on, I expected some plot driven conspiracy featuring Willis as the hero.
Instead, I got a character study focused on Gordon-Levitt.
I find it so interesting that Johnson wrote the role of Joe for Gordon-Levitt and then fixed him up with prosthetics and lots of make-up when Bruce Willis became available to play Old Joe. Gordon-Levitt always gives a good performance, and watching him in action here is really fun. When Willis and Gordon-Levitt sit across from each other in the diner, it’s like they’re playing the most expensively shot performance of the mirror game ever. (I
do have a few complaints about the make-up. It didn’t always seem to be applied in the same amounts. I am positive that in some scenes, his eyebrows were much darker than in others.) All in all, I think I was more impressed with Josh Brolin’s channeling of Tommy Lee Jones back in Men in Black III, but Gordon-Levitt’s Willis impression is still impressive. He really gets the eyes down, and he’s not wearing prosthetic eyes. Giving the same looks as someone else only comes with lots of practice and great skill. Plus Gordon-Levitt has a more difficult job than Brolin. Looper isn’t a comedy.
Gordon-Levitt’s got to act like Willis while acting the part of Joe. He’s pretty good.
Bruce Willis as Old Joe is pretty captivating, too. The story belongs less to him, but he does a good job telegraphing the urgency, desperation, and ultimately the confusion of the character.
I’ve already basically admitted that I’m obsessed with Emily Blunt, so I am probably strongly biased in her favor. But I honestly think this is her strongest performance since her captivating supporting turn in The Devil Wears Prada. Despite a lack of box office hits, Blunt is a very good actress who (like Gordon-Levitt) never gives a bad performance. But she’s exceptional as the mother of Cid whose name happens to be Sara (further proof that this story arises from Terminator tradition.)
I loved Pierce Gagnon as Cid, a character who deserves a feature of his own. (Maybe Rian Johnson should write a sequel, but in the words of Ricky Ricardo…Well, I don’t think he can ever plausibly sort out the mess he’s left, but we’ll see.) Why is it that creepy kids are such a cinematic pleasure?
Jeff Daniels makes the character of Abe frustratingly interesting. (I had a lot of unanswered questions about that guy. Plot wise, he seems to be a bit of a red herring, although I think when he “talks a little” to Joe in the interrogation scene, he utters lines crucial to understanding what Rian Johnson seems to be trying to achieve with the movie.) I also have unanswered questions about Noah Segen’s Kid Blue. For one thing, his accent really intrigued me. Where is this story set?
I really like Paul Dano, so every time he shows up in a movie, I give a little cheer. He’s so great at giving a strong performance as a character with a glaring weakness, and he makes Seth way more interesting than he probably ought to be. (I have unresolved questions about his character, too.)
I’ve long been mystified about why Piper Perabo’s career never took off in a bigger way, so it was nice to see her, too, and Tracie Thoms whom I’ve liked since Wonder Falls. Garret Dillahunt also makes a big impression in a relatively small part.
Best Scene Visually:
The farmhouse scenes appealed to me far more than the scenes set in the city. In terms of plot and pacing, the beginning of the story is much quicker and more eventful, but I could never get a clear impression of where this city was or what life there was actually like. The creepy farmhouse made sense right away. That’s a cinematic staple. I was glad that was where the movie chose to slow the pace and hang out for a while.
As visuals go, the scene where Cid trips on the stairs is the obvious standout. Another scene that leaves an impression is the attempted escape of Old Seth. It certainly establishes a clear motive for Joe to show such persistence in his efforts to close his loop.
Best Action Sequence:
For a movie so focused on interior development, there’s a surprising amount of action. In our theater, the scene where Old Joe “took care of things” with a machine gun drew sounds of approval from the audience. Old Joe’s violent efforts definitely drive a lot of the plot. (And in a way I just realized, the lovely Qing Xu’s character sets the story in motion, as well, actually doing what Old Joe claims she does more completely than he is even capable of realizing.)
Several of the most gripping moments in the movie come less from action than the threat of action. It’s a pretty suspenseful movie, scene by scene. I love the moment when Joe first comes to Sara’s rescue, for example, and the moment the next morning when she shows him just how determined she is to protect her son.
Funniest Moment:
Sara’s confession to Joe in her bedroom (about guys who used to hit on her) definitely got some laughs and made me smile.
Best Scene:
My favorite moment happens in the upstairs bedroom when Sara and Cid’s math lesson explosively evolves into something else entirely. Blunt and Gagnon are so convincing as mother and child at all times during this scene that requires them to show vastly different emotions and aspects of their relationship in quick succession.
Another great scene comes when Cid helps Joe evade someone who is looking for him. Tension builds throughout the scene culminating in a different kind of tension once Cid and Joe have escaped from the house. It’s also pretty great how Rian Johnson’s script/direction and Pierce Gagnon’s performance manage to make young Cid a character who adds both humor and suspense to every scene he’s in.
The Negatives:
Well, I’ll just say this. I hope Rian Johnson never actually builds a time machine because God help us all if he does! The man will destroy the entire world! This movie is definitely a mind-bender. It makes sense while you’re watching it, but afterwards, you do feel a bit cheated or something.
As a character drama, it’s great. Plot wise…best not to ask too many questions about what will happen as a result of what has happened. You’ll just end up with a headache.
Probably the biggest problem is the break in narrative continuity after Joe slips from his balcony after failing to close his loop. Up until that point, the plot has progressed in a straight-forward, linear fashion, following the adventures of Joe the looper in the year 2044. But the shift that suddenly interrupts this continuity is pretty abrupt and a bit disorienting. In fact, my husband and I walked away with slightly different ideas of how to interpret what followed. That’s one of the challenges of presenting a story like this on the screen.
The biggest problem with Looper is that the ending doesn’t seem completely satisfactory in terms of plot. We don’t really understand the rules of time travel. And it’s all well and good for Old Joe not to think about it because he has more pressing matters to attend to, but since most audience members aren’t similarly consumed with preemptive revenge, we’d prefer to understand how the time travel works.
Johnson gives us a captivating premise but never sets clear boundaries for his world. And that’s really fine, unless you leave the theater asking, “I wonder what happens next?” Tug on one thread until an entire sweater unravels and you’ll be left with less of a mess than you get when you leave Looper daring to ask, “What happens next?”
Overall:
Looper is fun to watch because of its unusual concept, exciting plot, and engaging characters. All the principal actors give strong performances, particularly Blunt and Gordon-Levitt. (And Willis has some pretty nice moments of anguish mixed in with his customary Bruce Willising.) The story is completely satisfying until the movie ends and you realize that you’re never going to get any answers that make sense of the time traveling. But by the time you reach that point, you’ve already been consistently entertained for almost two hours, so why complain? The movie is more about purgation, soul searching, and character development than time travel, anyway. Looper held my interest and delivered lots of exciting food for thought, and I’d gladly watch it again.