Spoilers below, disregard the entire review if you've yet to watch the film.
I finally got around to watching the film last night, alongside Argo, and my opinions of the film have changed very little from what I thought they would be after having read the script.
I loved the quote within the film regarding time travel, and how Old Joe could explain it to Young Joe, but at the end of the day it'd still be overly confusing and absolutely useless to what matters. It's absolutely true, far too often these days, 'high concept' films over do it with exposition, and the film comes off more like an instruction manual than a fluid narrative. I was fucking thrilled when Old Joe uttered those words, and thought to myself, "Finally, somebody who fucking gets it!" Unfortunately; Old Joe goes on to describe the memory aspect of time travel, his life story from that point, how he was saved and what he planned to do in the near future. Attention Rian Johnson. I don't want you to tell me how the movie is going to unfold, or execute character depth, through freaking dialog. I want you to show me, visually, and embed it within the narrative in such a way where it's not overly apparent. Not only is this done in this respective scene, but the movie starts off in such a way, with a ridiculous voice over monologue that once again explains the mechanics of the narrative that Johnson should be showing us. Maybe I'd let the beginning of the film slide if this movie were at all indicative of Film Noir, but it's not in the least, and as a result, I was completely taken out of the experience.
I actually enjoyed the first 30-40 minutes of this film. While the idea of time traveling being exploitable by future syndicates is laughable at best, as is the idea that they'd use time travel to kill (and not to enrich themselves), I understand the fact that time travel requires one to do away with such holes and simply take everything stride for stride. And so I did. And was rewarded with an initial 30-40 minutes that had a fresh concept and was relatively well paced. Unfortunately, this is probably the height of my enjoyment considering the premise and tone is completely abandoned, and the film basically makes a sudden turn towards what comes off as a completely different film.
The entire TK aspect of the film should not have been present within the narrative. It's almost like he watched 12 Monkeys and Scanners, decided he wanted to make a movie in the vein of both, and is forced with a choice between the two but ultimately decides to hamfists both into a single narrative. I honestly don't understand the point other than the fact that these scenes will look cool on the silver screen, which is a characteristic that is honestly littered through out the narrative (I'll get back to that later). Honestly, what is the point of the TK element? It's narratively justified in the sense that the kid is supposed to become some Magneto-esque crime lord in the future, but the exact same scenario, ie. the kid is wronged by Old Joe and lashes out by taking revenge in the future, is possible without the kid being some supernatural freak. You take away the powers and absolutely NOTHING changes, the only difference being the fact that you maintain the integrity of the initial premise and don't succumb to some awful screenwriting. And the decision to completely bring the narrative to a standstill by holing our protagonist within the farm was so misguided. The plot up until that point was relatively brisk, and decently paced, and that is completely destroyed when they decide to bring it to a halt for damn near an hour.
This is an aspect I'm starting to see more and more from directors not typically known to create action films, but then decide to tackle that particular aspect of cinema, and that's the fact that they can't direct action scenes worth a shit. The action within this film was incredibly uninspired, overtly straight forward and simply forgettable. I realize that this isn't an action film primarily, but there's not denying the fact that it's presence within the film is significant, and if that's the case, then damnit, you better do it right. I personally found all of the action to be relatively uninspired, with exception to the young boy's Phoenix-esque outbursts (I never thought I'd see an idea/scene stolen from X-Men 3, but I suppose I was wrong) which were handeled relatively well, but one scene in particular at the tail end of the first act emcompasses perfectly exactly what I'm talking about. The scene I'm referencing too is the retreading of Old Joe's ending of the loop, following the potential flash forward. What in the fuck was that? The zoomed out, unedited nature of the scene, while interesting in a post-Bourne world, did not work at all here and simply reinforced the fact that Bruce Willis is old as shit. It looked ridiculously sluggish and uninteresting, and while this is obviously the worst of the worst as far as the film is concerned, the other action scenes weren't all that much better.
This is more a commentary on science fiction films, particurally those that take place within the near future, than it is Looper, but can filmmakers get a bit more creative with their representations of the future? If I see another future that is simply post apocalyptic in nature, with a heightened poverty issue, and giant television screens running narrative related ADs and fucking hover vehicles everywhere... I'm going to scream. I don't know who started this trend, probably Ridley Scott with Blade Runner, but stop harping back to the same old source materials for inspiration and come up with something new. Your film will benefit from it. Oh, and why do future syndicate personel look like Hasidic Jews? Those henchmen looked absolutely awful in those outfits.
I also wasn't a fan of Johnson using firearms as a type of inter-syndicate hierarchy, ie. loopers at the bottom of the totem pole with blunderbuss' that are obviously limited in range... gatmen a tad bit higher up with handguns... etc. I suppose the idea sounds cool in theory, but in practice it came off as a lame attempt to film some scenes that visually looked cool and possibly as a means of suspense in the future due to the impracticality and unreliability of a blunderbuss. It's simply stupid, and doesn't really make sense considering the fact that looping is supposedly an incredibly important practice for these people, so you'd think they'd best equip their people to handle whatever is thrown at them. And equiping everyone with modern handguns, or weapons representative of the future (I like how everything is futuristic except the firearms, although I suppose they do show off a futuristic stun gun), would have spared us from that godawful showdown between Kid Blue and his motor bike, and Young Joe and his blunderbuss. Yet another example of the awful action.
The kid's dialog was also an issue, and touches on something I've noticed within all of Johnson's films, and that's his overly styalized dialog and inability to differentiate between character's dialog. I'm not the biggest fan of the "Overly Mature Child" trope in film, and while there are certainly child geniuses out in real life, the way it was handled within Looper was downright ridiculous at times. I'm not quite sure how to explain it, but I can almost hear the screenwriter speaking to me through every character, instead of being completely immersed and lost within the story. As a result, they lack individuality and all sort of just blend together, which is most noticeable within Cid considering his dialog combined with his performance make him come off as some adult midget, and not a small child. Not a huge issue by any means, but definitely something that bothered me a bit.
The ending was absolutely awful, and not in line with JGL's character overall personality over the course of the film. His character is an immoral hired hand, and incredibly selfish, evident by the fact that he acts in his own self interest (uttered by his own lips) for 99% of the film. We see this when he is given the opportunity to sacrifice some of his own self earnings to spare his friend, but he chooses self preservation and decides to do otherwise. He obviously doesn't change considering that his supposedly 'saved' self 30 years from now, is willing to kill three 10-year old children to effectively fix his own future. Yes, his recently slain wife is an innocent bystander, but so are 2 of the 3 children. So here we have a character who is the very opposite of selfless, and what does he do in the final minutes? He kills himself. Now, I'm aware of the fact that people can change, and I'll even concede that they can do so over the course of the day. But that wide of a swing? To kill ones self is the ultimate sacrifice, and I'm sorry, but his character doing so after only a day of characterization is complete and utter bullshit. Have him blow off some fingers, or even a hand, but don't insult me with some morbid bullshit that is not narratively reinforced.
And I didn't know where else to put it, but coincidences for the sake of the movie were far to frequent within the film. For example, one of the 3 possible Rainmaker children just happened to be the child of someone he knows. The chances of this actually being a legitimate scenario are like one in a million, and there's absolutely no reason to do this other than a cheap means of adding character depth, demanding sympathy for a character.
P.S. Do away with the Bruce Willis makeup on JGL, it's unneeded. And the attempt at trying to blend between JGL and Bruce Willis within the flash forward was SO fucking bad.
It's basically style over substance in the worst way possible (with style being fumbled away in the process), with a tail end that is much too different from the film's initial half. I actually enjoyed most of the performances, and the misc-en-scene was solid (some of the camera work was amateurish), but I thought the screenplay hampered what could have been a great film if handled correctly.
All in all, I'd probably give it 2 1/2 stars out of four, or basically a flawed film that is worth a watch, but nothing more.
