I watched it. Not bad; decent at many times. Basically:

The first 45 minutes are crappy. Brown, grey, and drab. Then it gets better. Once he arrives at the farm, it becomes a very solid B movie, and I was genuinely engaged. Even so, the flaws are simply enormous. For one thing, who are we supposed to root for in this movie? Bruce Willis is a horrible person; a human version of the terminator. Gordon Levitt doesn't become likeable until he is called to the role of protector. Actually, I don't mind that. It's an old school Hollywood device, and an effective one. But the choice Levitt makes in the end is simply not believable. Johnson fails to set him up as a character who would do that. It is a mindfuck, but without the proper dramatic weight to make it a first class movie.

Looper is a perfectly tolerable movie, engaging in the last third, but why do I get the sense that Johnson thinks he is reinventing the wheel here? I've seen movies like this before; we all have. Does nobody remember Frequency, with Dennis Quade? Not to mention Carrie? Carrie meets Frequency meets The Terminator meets Signs is basically what this movie is. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but on a 3 star level, very close to 2.5 stars due to the flaws. JB's blind love for mindfuck films is getting a little tiresome though.

Johnson's directing is mediocre, never going beyond the service of his concepts. Still, I'm not a hater of it. At least he does not have the delusion of reinventing the stylistic wheel, like Nolan and Whedon. Looper reminds me a bit of some of the middle-rung noirs I watched a few years back. It's a solid B-flick concept thriller with the good sense to type cast both Willis and Levitt, and let them do their thing. Johnson also casts a Nolan lookalike to play the pouty thug who gets his hand busted....in not so flattering a role....so I liked that as well. Perhaps the qualities of this movie are what prevent it from becoming a cultural hit, like some of the lesser movies of the past 5 years.

I'd like to say that I think those who enjoy Looper might genuinely get something out of Resident Evil: Retribution. Give it a chance.

Some good observations.
Yep, the ending felt like a shortcut - somehow I was reminded of "Se7en":



BTW: nice to see Jeff Daniels playing a crime lord and doing it convincingly. For most of his career he played unassuming mild mannered guys.

Good call - re: "Frequency". There are a lot of similarities. "Carrie" (1976) is stylistically so different, besides being a typical horror movie (religious themes and all) that perhaps only the supernatural power motif can be called a similarity. In "Looper" it has no "religious" element at all. Since the "explanation" is: a genetic mutation, it feels more like some kind of "Nikola Tesla" (yep Nolan used him in "The Presige") - type of energy which physics still cannot fully explain - as opposed to the religious explanations in 1970s horror movies such as "the Exorcist" or "The Omen".

I'm also in agreement with you, the ending caught me off-guard at first but when I actually stopped to think about it, JGL's actions weren't consistent with his character. I didn't like the addition of telekinesis into the plot either, time-travel is complicated enough, introducing another fantastical element was a bit much and as a result it just somehow felt out of place in the film.

I took Looper for what I think it basically was: old comic book-style sci-fi that's more interested in chucking in wild ideas page after page than necessarily maintaining an airtight construction. And I really enjoy that style of fiction. It's very rough-and-tumble, more in love with the joy of spinning a yarn than in the more structural, logical elements of storytelling. In this way, it reminds me of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, or Grant Morrison's Animal Man. Just wildly imaginative, visually arresting riffs, each one trying to top the previous one.

Think of it like music. Sometimes, you want to hear a composition that is crystalline in its meticulousness from beginning to end... but sometimes you just want to hear musicians with a lot of balls and raw talent trading crazy ideas over a vamp for as long as they can keep the piece from falling apart.

There you go! Well I think throwing-in ballsy ideas just for the sake of it is just great and very often the only way to come up with something new. BUT for me that is a "pre producton run" stage. I prefer the more polished versions (not overcooked of course) picking up those ideas. It's like brainstorming. There is at the very least one more stage after that: bringing some kind of structure into the randomness..... That goes for everything from speed metal music (as if I knew shit about that) to movies, novels, stageplays, planes, trains and automobiles....

I can't argue your opinion, but the movie does attempt to set the choice up dramatically. JGL's decision at the end is contrasted with his decision to give up Paul Dano's character towards the beginning of the film to save his silver. The decision at the end is designed to show the transformation of his character from someone who would give up his closest friend for money to someone who is willing to sacrifice himself for another. There's also the idea that he sees himself in Cid, and is willing to make the sacrifice in order to break the "loop".

Now, it's fair to say the movie rushed this or didn't explain it well because that's all completely subjective. However, dramatically speaking, the logic and character interactions for the decision have been presented and it fits with the film's theme.



Agreed. It uses the urban/rural contrast that's very common in many older B noirs.

Again regarding the ending decision, I think it's significant that the early, selfish decision is made while still in the city and the later, sacrificial decision is made while in the country.

My worry there is that the longer the movie cooks, the better the chances are that this early-stage audacity will get cooked right out of it.

This, I believe, is what happened with Inception. On paper, it sounds pretty wild, but when you sit down to actually watch it, its obsession with playing little narrative games ultimately stifles that sense of joy and invention. The one moment I wanted to stand up and shout "Now THIS is the movie!" was JGL's zero-G fight scene in the hallway. That was brilliant, audacious filmmaking. Inception is about 10 or 15 parts cold structure for every one of those moments.

I would gladly flip that ratio and accept a movie that plays fast and loose with the rules in order to harness more of those fireworks. And that's basically what Looper is. Heck, it even has JGL decked out in nice duds.

I don't think of it as randomness, so much as temporarily departing from the scale so that you can find your way back into it. Playing the wrong notes at the right times, so to speak.

I agree with you in many points. BUT: it depends on the context and style. Some things work great in early, sketchy stages. Trying to refine it would make things worse. Other things simply need a lot of retooling and re-thinking. "Star Wars" started as a concept in search of a story. It had to be re-thought, re-written, re-tooled and re-edited. I guess anything "operatic" needs careful and thorough crafting and tooling. B-movies by their very natures should be left in the raw stages, because there comes a point where everything will go south.

In music you have a lot of examples of "organized chaos". Check this example (sorry to go off topic here) of careful construction and analysis of what is made up mostly of various sponaneus strokes of genuises - including a lot of "off" notes or even "one size fits all"-licks just playing over the harmonies, disregarding them, just to click back in smoothly. It might sound a little "overcooked" because it is a piano leson, but it's still a good example of the stage I am talking about (just stop right here before it gets overcooked).
Warning: To non-musicians (or those with other tastes which is perfectly legimit) this might sound like cheezy hotel launge music.

Anyway I love that version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoDJl3vcpgo

It's funny because I didn't like the movie supermuch, but I can't believe you didn't like the first 45 minutes. That scene with the guy's body falling apart was legitimately unnerving

Agreed. I think it's definitely a great example of how torture and violence can have a greater impact sometimes when they're not shown directly.
-Jeremy

I've seen too many other movies that had the same thing. Frequency had it. It reminded me of something out of Nightmare on Elm Street or Hellraiser or something; perhaps crossed visually with a villain's demise in an Indiana Jones movie.



This is true. Pacing is everything. Looper kept the craziness coming at a respectable pace. But he requires that you give some weight and investment to his story, since its elements are never truly original. For instance, I was taken out of it a little when the kid demonstrates his powers violently, since Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen kept popping into my head. The trouble is, Johnson's visualization isn't unique enough; it's too similar to the way Snyder did it in Watchmen.

Interesting that you thought it improved once they introduced the farm. Most were the opposite. They love the movie until that portion.

I myself would give it a strong 3.0 (or maybe a weak 3.5, have to rewatch it first).

Didn't realize there was so much angst toward this film. I guess I'm going against the grain with you all when I say that I really loved this film.

To me, Looper doesn't try to re-invent the science fiction/time travel "wheel", it simply puts forth a narrative that focuses on a part of the human condition. Many of the sci-fi greats such as Blade Runner, Gattaca, etc. tell a story set in a futuristic period, and the story focuses on some aspect of human emotion, turmoil,confusion, or overall meaning. Looper, in my opinion, grasps an expect of the human condition that hasn't been fully explored before--it seems to have a significant focus on "family" while also weaving in other themes of sci-fi's past.

I also don't understand the immense hatred of the second half of the film that takes place on the "farm". Is it slighted because it wen't against expectations?Did it have pacing issues to some of you? Just curious because I found this last part of the film particularly special, in the sense that it did somewhat go against my own expectations---rooting the remaining part of a science fiction film in a rural setting where the "science fiction" aspect isn't as blatant-- allowing the film to convey its themes and message in a more relatable manner.