Review: Looper (second-pass - SPOILERS)

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



Looper (Huge Spoilers. Seriously.)
118 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson

Okay. You've had three weeks to see it, so I'm going to dish out the spoilers. You won't really get the rest of this post unless you've seen the film, and it'll ruin it if you haven't. There's a spoiler-free review of Looper here. All good? Splendid...



The Premise: 2044. Time travel hasn't been invented yet, but in 30 years, it will be. It will be instantly outlawed, and only used by the mob seeking to eliminate their enemies. As bodies are almost impossible to dispose of in 2074 (due to bio-tagging, etc, apparently), mobsters will zap their enemies back in time to pre-arranged locations and specialised assassins known as Loopers kill them the second they arrive. Tied, hooded and with blocks of silver strapped to their backs as payment for the Looper, they're despatched, relieved of their loot, and unceremoniously incinerated. The mob's enemy disappears in 2074, and a body is destroyed in 2044 that no-one's looking for as it doesn't exist, legally. Part of the deal with the assassins is a special clause written into their contract: that at some point, the mob will send back the Looper's future self (should they live that long) for termination. This avoids the loose ends that the gangsters don't need, and is known as 'closing your Loop'. Your future self will arrive with a bumper payment on his back (which you don't see until after you've killed him), and once that's cashed, you're released from your contract - free to enjoy your retirement over the next 30 years. Easy.

The Short Actuality: The five year old boy, Cid, is Joe as a child (Joe A). He witnesses his mother being killed by Bruce Willis (Joe C), when Joseph Gordon Levitt (Joe B) fails to stop him. This action sets Joe A (the child) on the disturbed, criminal path to become Joe B (the Looper), Joe C (the redeemer) and eventually Joe D (the Rainmaker). All of these lives intertwine to perpetuate themselves over the time between 2044 and 2074 until Joe B realises it can be stopped by him sacrificing himself at the point of his mother's murder.

Question One: Why send Loopers back to their young selves? This informs the assassin that they actually live for the next 30 years, and effectively makes them immortal in their own eyes. Any change to this (death by recklessness, excessive partying etc) would create a paradox and alter the timeline. By Abe's own admission, altering the future unnecessarily is not something they want to do. Surely a neater solution would be to send Looper One back to be disposed of by Looper Two etc, and keep it as anonymous and lowly-paid as the other killings? No paranoia, no paradoxes.

Question Two: If bodies are so difficult to dispose of in the future, how are the wide-hatted goon squad going to dispose of Bruce Willis's wife in 2074? They arrive to get Willis with handguns which they can't reasonably be expected to use by virtue of their very presence. Once they've clumsily slotted her, why don't they send her body back with him in the time machine? Which leads me to…

Question Three: Why send live targets back at all? Why not kill them in the barn in 2074 and zap the dead bodies back for disposal? We know non-live matter can be transported as the targets all arrive wearing clothes and packs of silver and/or gold. Killing people isn't the problem in 2074, only disposing of the bodies, and it'd be a lot less risky to do business this way.

Question Four: Isn't anyone else a little concerned by the fact that Joe has sex with his own mum? I mean, it's not like he becomes his own father or anything paradoxical like that, but if anything that just makes the whole situation pointless and even more weird. I know Cid claims Sara isn't his mother, but the kid's disturbed, five years old, and Sara's got a far more convincing account of events. His own mum.

Questions one to three, you can take your time with, but someone needs to look at question four sharpish.
Time is of the essence.



DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Looper (Spoiler-Free. I think.)

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



Looper (Spoiler-free. I'm pretty sure it's spoiler-free. Look, do you want to know about the film, or not?)
118 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson

If a movie about time-travel, and assassins, and having to take out your future-self doesn't get you going then... look, Emily Blunt getting all attitudey with a shotgun. This alone has to be worth the price of admission.



I'll keep this short, as I really can't go too deep without giving spoilers. And to paraphrase Holly, there's no such thing as small when you're talking about causality...

The Plot: Working for an organisation thirty years in the future, Joe is a hired assassin, anonymously disposing of people where and when the bodies can't be found. It's not unusual for these Loopers to have to eventually kill their future selves, as a means of insurance for all concerned, but when future-Joe arrives for termination one day, he's had thirty years to think about it, and he's got other plans...

The Good: If you like time-travel movies, you'll be right at home. Looper doesn't make you work like Primer does, but it doesn't hold your hand for the entire movie, either. The sets alternate between Kansas City and the outlying farmland. Because the main story is set in 2044 (with Joe's employer being in 2074), the future-tech on display is fairly underplayed, with most of the surroundings only being slightly different. Well, apart from the hoverbikes, of course. And the other obvious plus-point is that Kansas farmland looks pretty much the same in 2044 as it does now: budget-win.

A lot has been written about Joseph Gordon-Levitt's make-up job which transforms him into a young Bruce Willis. While they got the nose right, the real work is done by Joseph adopting Bruce's mannerisms in the scenes they share. Bruce pretty much turns up and plays Bruce, you know how he is. On the subject of makeup, there are other nice touches whereby the younger and older versions acquire the same scars throughout the movie. They're not dwelled on, they're just there for those of you paying attention to the details because the plot's not as complicated as some might have you believe.

My favourite scene features Joe and Joe in a diner, with Bruce yelling at his younger self to get him to understand that the how-and-why of the time-travel isn't important; it's what's happening now that is. It's not entirely subtle, but it's basically a guide for watching the film.

Looper is a great time-travel movie, although you shouldn't need to see it twice to get everything that's going on.

The Bad: In places, but by no means all of the time, Looper tries to be too clever for its own good, yet in others it's a tad too simplistic. In order to create tension and still have a flexible plot, a lot of groundwork is laid with alternate-timelines here, and rippling-changes-throughout-the-years there. It's a device which allows characters to not implode with memory-loops, and get away with creating situations that would ordinarily be a paradox. But, some events then come into play which discard the theories that have been layed down, and shouldn't work by the film's own rules. I may expand on this in a later review, if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Oh, and that thing that happens should come as no surprise at all if you've been paying attention. And I'm probably saying too much by even posting that.

The Ugly: There is no ugly. Nothing's ugly when you've got Emily Blunt with a shotgun.

I can't quite give it the full-marks it's getting from elsewhere, but it'll be worth more watches, for sure.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.