Looper

In prehistoric times, when I was a boy reading Anderson's "Annals of the Time Patrol," I wondered how difficult it is to write (or shoot) sci-fi with time travel themes and not fall into the trap of a time paradox that has the ability to turn the story into an absurd farce. However, the problem of a time paradox is not what makes Looper unbearable in my eyes. Johnson's film is a typical summer blockbuster, which doesn't worry about illogical slip-ups in the script or rushed and bizarre relationship building. It offers potentially interesting themes, but it processes them or barely touches on them in a superficial way. The directing is routine and so is Bruce Willis' performance, which functions as a worn-out template for action heroes. Twelve Monkeys once proved that it is possible to create a smart, cultivated, and entertaining genre film about such a difficult-to-grasp phenomenon as time travel. In comparison to Gilliam's film, Looper is quite a bit worse. Overall impression: 40%. (05/02/2022)

Bruce Willis is able to time travel much better that this (hello 12 Monkeys). Looper is another one of those new sci-fi films (Moon, Source Code, In Time...) where it's nice to see that they can get by without a huge budget and that they can raise the hopes of genre lovers that they'll be original and fresh... But that's the end of it. In this case I liked the initial idea, the technical execution and both actors (Joseph Gordon-Levitt handled the role of Bruce Willis quite well, he wasn't even very ridiculous), but the rest wasn't worth much. Continually stupid and illogical, the clichéd passage on the farm makes me want to kill someone, and worst of all was the ending, in which - SPOILER - the hero died, but his inner voice kept on talking. (25/02/2013)

After the opening twenty minutes, I was prepared for a futuristic variation on existential crime films along the lines of Le Samouraï. However, Rian Johnson directs with much less focus than the precise Melville. Thought the result doesn’t fall apart like The Brothers Bloom, the film still lacks a uniform style. Despite the absolutely serious and very impressive cutaways into the mechanised life of a hired assassin (though it somehow wasn’t clear to me why the targets aren’t sent back in time already dead), Looper also contains farcical black humour, a saccharine romance, brutal “Rambo” action and a bit of telekinesis for beginners (not to mention the very western-style final conflict on the street). Johnson switches not only between a lot of genres, but also between a lot of narrators. Though the narrative thus unfolds in an interesting way, it doesn’t ultimately lead to any surprising “convergence” into a unified point.  The use of multiple points of view essentially only confirms the truth of my favourite line from The Rules of the Game: “The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.” I’m afraid that the attempt to apply Bordwell’s forking-path model of narration to the film, placing in front of us two human minds influencing each other instead of two time planes, would lead us up a blind alley (though I would like to have this assumption refuted by a second viewing). More important than the time paradoxes for Johnson are the moral dilemmas with which the characters are confronted and which force us to constantly assess the situation from an emotional perspective. To whom does the future belong? Where does the line between a wasted and fulfilled life lead? What right do we have to make decisions for others? Here the non-Hollywood-style desperate fatefulness appears again, but repackaged in a more familiar, family-melodrama wrapper. I believe that if Johnson had stuck with a short runtime, as was the original plan, Looper would have been a great film about which geeks would tweet enthusiastically from the whole known internet world. As it stands, however, it is a very imaginative film that is more about sense than sensibility in conflict with its dominant sci-fi genre. 80% (08/10/2012)

A great premise, an interesting execution. Looper might not be perfect and it has a whole lot of holes, but on the other hand, it tries to be unconventional, original and quite unusual – successfully so. After all, it can’t be easy to come up with a time travel story, so stasis will probably always have one or twoholes in it. On the other hand, Gordon-Levitt, Willis, Blunt and Daniels are making up for it perfectly. The rather slow and difficult start is then saved by the story, which is unpredictable in each passing minute, even though it makes you think that it isn’t. And that’s basically the nitty-gritty. Looper is an excellent idea and I must tip my hat off to anyone who decides to pursue these kinds of ideas. It’s actually a suicide mission in a sense that you’ll either fall in love with or you’ll just get pissed off. And I must say that I am leaning towards the prior. And when it comes to Bruce Willis? He’s a sweetheart, finally a movie where his character has a purpose, even if he doesn’t speak as much as I’d like. (28/06/2013)

At last a proper sci-fi. The nutritious story wrings everything it can from the topic of time travel. Rian Johnson first sketches the basic premise, then later enriching it with other added value and manages not to lose his way. Bruce is on best form (in terms of action and acting) and Joe just confirms his place as one of today’s best young actors, even under a thick layer of makeup. And moreover we have the incredibly well-cast kid who is a pest, a bit of a psycho, but still you find yourself rooting for him at least a little. The low budget turned the year 2044 into a horrible urban cesspit or an empty field in Kansas. This gives the picture the proper atmosphere where everything is more or less... gray. Anyone who compares this with Terminator was just stupidly concentrating on Willis’s storyline, while this movie isn’t really about him and don’t think you’ll get 12 Monkeys here, Looper has a long way to go to get to that. In any case, I want to watch this again soon. (11/10/2012)