"Looper"

Went to go see Looper yesterday.

(Warning: contains spoilers)

For those of you who don't know, Looper is a film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis that involves time-travel.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't spend part of the movie covering up different parts of JGL's face with my hand to see how they did the prosthetics. I've determined they mainly altered the part of his face right under his nose to make home more Willis-like. 

Back to the story. It had elements of Terminator and Kick-Ass in that it involved time-travel specifically meant for killing an individual and a lot of bloody (but fun) action sequences. While I commend the movie for having a mostly original plot, I did have a few qualms with the film overall.

The world-building was phenomenal. It felt like a pre-Blade Runner universe - dark, dingy, flying motorcycles but no flying cars, yet. The main character spent most of his free time (when he wasn't using drugs) learning French. The ongoing gag was that he should have learned Mandarin (good gag - it's what made me think of Blade Runner so much). The outfits weren't trying too hard and did look very near-future. 

The basic plot is that Loopers are individuals who kill people who are sent back in time so they can dispose of the body before they ever existed. After working for a few years, the future version of themselves are sent back in time to be killed. This is called "Closing the loop." If you refuse to kill your future self, your past self is tortured in rather horrifying ways that alter your future self. (The way this was covered was a terrifying ordeal where the longer a future Looper avoided being killed the more parts of his body were lopped off. It was actually rather terrifying).

Namely, the main issue I had was the fact that some issues were never resolved. In the future there is a leader called the "Rainmaker." Apparently he's sending the Loopers back in time to close everyone's loops. Loopers are supposed to be killed 30 years after retirement. They never stated that The Rainmaker was killing Loopers before this time, only that he was closing all of the loops.

They never show the Rainmaker, nor do they explain why he is supposedly menacing. In fact, they never really delve into him at all. The entire movie seems like it will build up to an explanation but instead the issue is dropped overall. Well, mostly.

The future version of Joe (Willis) ends up getting married for a few years before his loop must be closed. During the struggle, his wife is killed. Enter Terminator mode.  Future Joe avoids getting killed by past Joe and decides he will kill the Rainmaker when he's a child. There are three potential children who could be the Rainmaker, so Future Joe decides to kill all three children. (Not without some remorse). During this time, Future Joe is being chased after by Past Joe as well as the Loopers in charge of terminating runaways. Meanwhile, Past Joe is trying to kill Future Joe while avoiding being captured and tortured. 

Past Joe discovers the Rainmaker as a child and ends up bonding with the mother as well  as the child. He decides to protect the child even though he was supposed to grow up to be "evil." The mother keeps stating that if the child is raised correctly, he'll turn out okay. Future Joe ends up intruding and ends up (nonfatally) shooting the child. In order to stop the future and save the mother and son, Past Joe ends up killing himself, saving everyone in the process and rewriting the future. 

Now, here's the issue. Rather than going back and showing the future, the movie ends with the mother taking care of her son and then the screen fades to white and THEN TO BLACK.

There was no proper resolve to the plot. They didn't even bother recapping Future Joe's relationship with his wife, nor did they show an alternate bit where she was alive. If the film had cut to the future for 5 minutes rather than just showing her stroking her son's hair, it could have ended better.

So, in all, it felt like the entire movie ended on a real whimper. Excellent universe, somewhat interesting characters, very weak ending.

Also at one point it almost seemed like Past Joe realized he was the Rainmaker even though it was supposed to be a parallel. That part could have definitely been filmed/written better.

All in all, good film, but rather undeserving of the praise and attention it's been getting.