Looper

A good plotline spoiled by trying too hard.

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

Genre: Action

The film tells the story of Joe (played by both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis), a man dragged into a corrupt network of ‘Loopers’; hitmen who are hired to dispose of men sent to them from the future. Although fantastical, the plotline is at least original, and makes a refreshing change from the typical Hollywood action film brimming with car chases and unnecessary explosions.

Looper begins by introducing a future world in which time travel is invented 30 years in the future. Yes, even the initial setting for the film is confusing, and sadly the timeframe becomes no clearer throughout the film. The dark, desolate and somewhat dystopian setting of the film perfectly reflects the narrative of hopelessness and corruption, but there is one problem; it looks nothing like the future. The solution? Throw some hover crafts into the plot. The most confusing thing, however, is why Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s story needed to be set in the future at all, and the notion of a future future just complicates things needlessly.  

The story has pace right from the off, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s narration explaining the gritty details of a Looper’s job. The narration is a nice touch and, redolent of film noir, serves to portray our hero as downbeat and devoid of emotion. At around ten minutes in, Joe explains the process of “closing the loop,” by which a Looper is required to kill his older self. From this point on, we can fairly confidently assume that Joe will be required to “close his own loop,” yet the film drags this out, unsuccessfully trying to present this as an ingenious and surprising twist to the plot. After twenty minutes of dilly-dallying around, Joe’s older self (Bruce Willis) finally shows up. Faced with his armed younger self, old Joe manages to defeat young Joe and his gun by throwing lumps of gold at him. Well, it is Bruce Willis. The encounters between the two lead actors are often humorous, and Willis adds a personality and a heart to an otherwise one dimensional character.

Although both leads give a fair performance throughout the film, I cannot help but wonder who cast Bruce Willis as the older version of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Ignoring their blatant dissimilarity was sometimes a struggle, not just aesthetically as it was also difficult to believe that they were playing the same character. And let’s not mention the embarrassing scene showing the aging process of the character, which was in essence Bruce Willis in black wig and a leather jacket. Aside from looking silly in a wig, Willis was often the best part of the film. The scenes of old Joe’s life were well shot and the film was perhaps wrong to not show more of older Joe’s story, as Willis’ relatively short screen time meant that it was a little difficult to truly relate to his character’s life.

The plot of Looper is original and entertaining throughout. Though I should mention that the plot for the last hour of the film is in fact the plot of a completely different film. Whilst the first half of the film centres on the cat-and-mouse chase between Willis and Gordon-Levitt, without warning the film suddenly turns into some supernatural drama tracking the antics of telekinetic Sarah (Emily Blunt) and her disturbed child. In a bid to try and intertwine multiple stories and themes, the film became absurd and appeared lost. Most of the latter part of the film was a huge tangent from the initial storyline, and the telekinesis plotline was often just an excuse to blow the film’s budget on special effects, overturning cars and making things float.

Losing its way through trying too hard, Looper was too ambitious and too ambiguous, interesting yet inconclusive.  The ending of the film failed to impress as the backstories of the characters were largely under-explained, and the unresolved nature of the film was neither clever nor entertaining, rather that the filmmakers had missed something from the end. Similarly, the film was resoundingly confusing: another example of a film which assumes that confusing an audience equates to an intelligent plotline.

Summary: Although unlikely to generate many ‘Die Hard’ fans, Looper is well-made, unique and overall entertaining.

VERDICT: 7/10