REVIEW - LOOPER

I’ve been a fan of Rian Johnson for a while now.

I have a picture of him on my wall. Sometimes I masturbate while looking at it.

No I don’t, that was a lie. Mostly.

I thought Brick was a weirdly inventive reimagining of the Noir style and The Brothers Bloom, while far from perfect, was a mostly original addition to a genre movies that isn’t exactly known for it’s originality. The man knows how to make movies. More importantly he knows how to make movies we haven’t seen before.  You have to appreciate that. Seriously, appreciate it.

Appreciate the hell out of it right this instant you son of a bitch.

Long story short, Looper is one of the better films that I’ve seen this year. It’s a great piece of work.   It’s not even great in the goofy way most summer movies are great. It’s great in the way that great movies are great.

In the film Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brick, The Dark Knight Rises) stars as a hired gun named Joe. Joe is what’s known as a “Looper.” It’s Joe’s job to blasts dudes in the face and torch their bodies after some mobsters from the future send them back through time.

I have a feeling I made it sound a hell of a lot more confusing than it really is. Trust me, it makes perfect sense when you’re watching it.

 Anyway, Joe’s living the relative good life until the mob decides to send a future version of himself (Bruce Willis) back to “close the loop” and Joe lets him slip away without a hold in his head.

It’s tough to do something that hasn’t been done before when it comes to time travel flicks. It really is. If you’ve seen one time travel movie you’ve sort of seen all the time travel movies, right? Amazingly, Looper pulls it off. There’s a lot of great stuff going on here.  There’s a scene relatively early on involving a character played by Paul Dano that really sets the stage for the kind of ride you’re in for. Nearly everything about Looper is unexpected. There are twists, and there are turns and it manages to keep you guessing. Admittedly, you might see the ending coming. I did. Sort of. So what? It’s pulled off in such an interesting way that it won’t leave you dissatisfied.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is great, despite the fact that he’s sort of-kind of doing a Bruce Willis impression and he has a prosthetic butt-chin glued to his face. Bruce Willis is solid, even if he is basically playing every Bruce Willis character we’ve seen before. Emily Blunt is watchable. Jeff Daniels is decent in a small role and Paul Dano’s bits are quality stuff. As good as the cast is, the kid who steals the show is Pierce Gagnon. Kid’s good.

Kid’s really good.

Kid’s really surprisingly good.

I was legitimately terrified of this kid.

Child actors are almost always a hit and miss. Things can go really wrong; really quick when you’re asking an eight year-old to drop proper when it comes to stone-serious dialogue. That’s not an issue here. The kid nailed it.

Is “drop proper” a saying? Did I just make that up? If it’s not, it should be.

While the performances are good from top to bottom, they aren’t necessarily what make Looper work as well as it does. Most impressive of all is that fact that Rian Johnson has created a world that feels almost eerily plausible, despite the utter nonsense of time travel. The story takes place in a fully fleshed out universe. It makes sense. It feels logical despite it’s premise. The script has heart as well. The characters don’t exist for the sole purpose of shooting each other in their respective faces and occasionally tossing a witty quip.

In fact, there isn’t even much of that in the movie anyway.

If you go into Looper expecting to see just another mindless action flick you’re going to leave disappointed. If you want to turn off your brain at the door, forget it. See something else. At the same time, if you’re leaving disappointed you’re an idiot. This is a damn fine film.

Stop being an idiot.

Looper is worth a trip to the theater and if you manage that it’s certainly worth a rental down the line. I’m not saying that it’s perfect, because it isn’t. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s make-up is a teensy bit distracting at times, there are moments here and there that could have stood for a bit of tweaking, and if you really hate yourself and feel the need to dig into the mechanics of the time travel stuff you’ll spot holes. There are missteps, sure. Nothing’s perfect. However, I can pretty much guarantee that you haven’t really seen too much like this movie before and that alone is almost always a positive. In my book Rian Johnson is three-for-three.

Time to masturbate to his picture.

-Steven