Quoted from Dreamscale Just saw this flick this morning.  Tough film to review, for me, as well as a tough film to even decide what I thought of it. Overall, I did enjoy it.  For once, we get an actual R rated movie that deserves and utilizes its R rating. sex, nudity, violence, drug use, and profanity. For me, the negatives are as follow: Even though it's quite unique in its setup and plot, it also feels very by the numbers.  I'm talking about various relationships and characters.  Almost as if certain "things" just had to be included here, which for me, is a mistake. The movie is well done, especially on a rather small budget of $30 Million (small in comparison to other sci-fi, action flicks), Performances are all very good, IMO.  I thought Emily Blunt's Sara was not only well acted, but damn, she looked fine as well.  My hat is off to young Pierce Gagnon, as Cid, who grows up to be the evil "Rainmaker". In all seriousness, I'd say his performance was one of the best by a child that I can remember. I'm not surprised the critics adore this movie, nor am I surprised that it's making a killing, based on WWBO returns.  It is a good flick and it's a fresh take on time travel and sci-fi.  I may even watch it again, when it comes to DVD and satellite.  I definitely didn't love it, though...but I guess that's a pretty positive thing that I didn't dislike it, either.

Well, what do you know, but you and I LARGELY AGREE on a movie, Jeffrey!

It's OK, but a very simple story told as though it's complicated - and it adds absolutly nothing worthwile in following that course. There was purpose in telling Pulp Fiction in a jumble, but it's ill-fitting here, IMO. So that's my big problem because it obscured what was decent material - themes that Chris touched on and themes suffocated by this telling of the story. To me, it's one of those films where people like to think they have something over everyone 'cos they "get it". Not a fan of that type of pretentiousness at the best of times - especially when the film doesn't have the necessary beef in the sandwich.

Andrew, my friend and former nemesis...with age, comes wisdom.  You are evolving, grasshopper.



Chris, I'm not sure if your post is serious or in jest.  If it's indeed serious, then I can tell you flatout, that you and I do not watch movies the same way.  I don't give a rat's ass about any of that stuff.

I watch to be entertained.  I watch to get away from reality.  I watch to see things I can't see in real life.  When a movie engages me, I react positively.

Simple as that, really.

SPOILERS

Andrew,

I thought the telling of the film was fairly straight-forward? Didn't think we were meant to be confused, or see things as complicated, except for perhaps the few moments after Gordon-Levitt falls, the film cuts to black, and then it skips back to him killing himself. Basically, the first half-hour is Gordon-Levitt's backstory, the next half-hour-ish is Willis' backstory, and the final hour is a somewhat overly static second and third act.  Willis' story even picks up right where it should, in linear terms, and then leads right back to where it should -- I saw the whole film as a linear telling of the events as they would have happened the first time around (ie, he grew up as a looper which caused him to kill himself which caused him to go to China which caused him to meet his wife which caused her to die which caused him to go back in time which caused him to try to kill the Rainmaker which caused him to kill himself in the first place -- though none of this addresses Albino's highly valid point that the first cause for the Rainmaker's hatred of Loopers doesn't exist). Or did I read that wrong?

Jeff,

Yeah for sure serious. And I'm not surprised to hear that we don't watch movies in the same way...I am still surprised, though, and still think it's great, that we both like Eyes Wide Shut.  

I like being entertained by films -- The Rock is my favourite film and there's little that's more completely devoid of depth than a Michael Bay flick -- but if I think a film is trying to get at something deeper, which I think Looper was, that's what I tend to focus on afterwards. I like to watch people shoot each other, especially when it's nice and violent as Looper is, but my favourite part of a film experience is generally discussing afterwards with friends, and to me, the stuff I describe above makes for more interesting discussion than the plot.

When you say you don't give a rat's ass, do you mean you don't notice it, or you notice it but don't care?

Do you think Rian Johnson intended to get people thinking about that stuff? Or maybe I'm just reaching?

Quoted from Heretic Jeff, Yeah for sure serious. And I'm not surprised to hear that we don't watch movies in the same way...I am still surprised, though, and still think it's great, that we both like Eyes Wide Shut.   I like being entertained by films -- The Rock is my favourite film and there's little that's more completely devoid of depth than a Michael Bay flick -- but if I think a film is trying to get at something deeper, which I think Looper was, that's what I tend to focus on afterwards. I like to watch people shoot each other, especially when it's nice and violent as Looper is, but my favourite part of a film experience is generally discussing afterwards with friends, and to me, the stuff I describe above makes for more interesting discussion than the plot. When you say you don't give a rat's ass, do you mean you don't notice it, or you notice it but don't care? Do you think Rian Johnson intended to get people thinking about that stuff? Or maybe I'm just reaching?

No, Chris, I hear ya...I really do.

Sometimes I do "see" deeper meaning, and others, I don't even try to...or care about what it was supposed to mean.

Take Eyes Wide Shut, for example.  Do/did I see everything that Kubrick wanted me to, after 8 or so viewings?  I don't know...probably not, but I actually dug it after my first viewing, at the theater.

I think you may be reaching a bit with all you're bringing up, but then again, I don't know.

History will be kind to this film, much kinder than the critics, from what I've seen.

Early on in the movie, I was down on it, because I thought the plot holes were going to sink it. It's possible I missed the explanations for certain things, but I was spending way too much time asking questions.

Many had answers if you thought about it. For example, why don't they just send bodies back from the future? The answer is if they kill them in the future, authorities will immediately know, though for some reason they won't miss the person if he's transported to the past.

Why not just send these guys back a few million years? I guess there is a limit how far back or something.

Anyways, if you stop digging for some of the paradoxes inevitable with time loops, and try to accept the premise, the movie becomes cool. And almost much more than cool.

It didn't quite go where I thought it was going to go, and if it had, I think it could have perhaps become a sci fi film of historical premise. Let me explain and hopefully someone's willing to play along.

WARNING, SPOILERS and maybe even ARC discussion to follow! Don't say you weren't warned Jeff!

Let's consider what the standard hero's journey type story is. Our main character is presented with a challenge, he has a flaw, and he must overcome that flaw in order to succeed in the end.

Your basic character arc.

Think about how much you could do with a character arc in a story like this!  

Here's the movie premise: when a looper survives to the point in the future where time travel is happening, he has to be killed. He can't be there when a new version of himself is born. Something like that. The loopers accept this.

(Here's where another tricky issue comes up: the looper that survives all the way to the time travel period has to be sent back and killed. Fine. But why does he have to be killed by his looped self? Why can't they get another looper to do it?)

Ok, so the surviving loopers are sent back to be killed by themselves. Sometimes the looper with the gun freezes, and the older version runs.

That's where the fun starts. There's a really cool scene where the young looper is slowly killed by removing body parts, and the old looper, now in the same period, has the effects take place in him, with body parts disappearing.

Where the story opened up for me was when the Bruce version of himself started talking about the connection between his memory and the memories made by his younger self. If the younger self meets someone while the older one is in this world,  the older self suddenly has the same memory.

Now do you see why I brought up character arc?! It's a very strange arc that loops on itself. If the younger self learns a lesson, in theory the older self now learns it too.

Ok, so the older self(Bruce Willis) has found love with a nice Asian girl. But then we have the next development in the story. There's a mutation that has formed within humanity that allows part of the population to have some minor telekinetic power. Well, in the future along comes this guy, the Rainmaker, with enormous powers, and he decides to destroy all of the loopers. As a result, guys come in and shoot Bruce and his Asian lady.

The only way Bruce can save the lady is to loop back in time and make sure the rainmaker is destroyed as a boy. He has a birth date and a hospital, and it turns out 3 boys were born on that day. So he has 3 addresses, and he must kill all 3 boys.

It doesn't come easy for him to kill a boy. And he has already lectured his younger self on being self absorbed. But he does shoot the two kids, and is on his way to the third.

But the story did not go where I thought it would, and that it should have. What I thought we had was a race for the young looper to fulfill his character arc before his older self killed the last kid. If the younger self learned to be unselfish, to be consistent, the older self should have also learned the lesson, just like the memories changed within him. That would have made this brilliant!

They didn't go there. The young self learned the lesson, but the older self remained determined to kill the boy. Only the suicide of the younger saves the kid by making the older disappear as though having never existed.

So the movie stimulated thought. And the rest was plenty good enough to entertain. I think there was a missed opportunity to loop that character arc, which would have been really cool. The film was still effective enough as is.  

Thumbs up for sure. Much better than Prometheus, IMO.

Note: Jeff, I assume the gold and silver ingots were because you can't send cash from the future, or whatever currency they have then. For example, if you wanted to send money back in time to your grandfather, what would you send? Might be hard to find bills from that era. So you send ingots.

Finally caught up with this one over the weekend. And...
I wasn't impressed. On many levels, at all.

Really wanted to like this one.
I want to support outside the box cinema getting a worldwide release.
I want films like this and District 9 to succeed in pushing original content.

But this one left me cold on many levels...
At first, it seems that Bruce Willis is the more sympathetic one.
But as the story progresses, he's the monster that JGL was in the beginning.
It's like the lessons never consistently transferred as the memories did.

I still don't see why this script needed the mob and the TK stuff.
Guess it's a conscious choice to go with plot over characterization.
Wanted to know two side of the same guy more than all the future junk.

In Brick and Brothers Bloom, I felt beating hearts behind the pithy dialogue.
Pleased the film succeeded enough to encourage Hollywood to foster bold ideas.
But the convoluted nature of the story smothered my interest.

And JGL's makeup looked more like Bogart than Bruce.

E.D.

Yes, the lessons transferring when the memories did was the idea that intrigued me most, as I said above in a more long winded way. They didn't go that route, though.

I think it's hard to do time loop movies without serious questions arising.

I am trying to take a more generous approach to movies than I used to. Same with scripts.

I look at it this way: if we only like 1 or 2 movies a year, we're setting the standard too high perhaps. I kind of dissed Planet of the Apes, and that was a mistake on my part. I should have just appreciated it for what it was.

Similar to scripts. I've seen people on Carson's blog who trash every script. But I wonder what they would do if they had to select a top 25 like Carson has on his blog. Could they find 25 scripts worthy of production? Could they find 5?

Looper definitely has all the flaws you pointed out. But I think it's making the attempt, and does a pretty good job of entertaining while it does.

I'm new to the movie thing, so my approach is probably more fluid and subject to wild swings than most people! Who knows, maybe soon I'll like Transformers 17!

Quoted from Heretic Andrew, I thought the telling of the film was fairly straight-forward? Didn't think we were meant to be confused, or see things as complicated, except for perhaps the few moments after Gordon-Levitt falls, the film cuts to black, and then it skips back to him killing himself. Basically, the first half-hour is Gordon-Levitt's backstory, the next half-hour-ish is Willis' backstory, and the final hour is a somewhat overly static second and third act.  Willis' story even picks up right where it should, in linear terms, and then leads right back to where it should -- I saw the whole film as a linear telling of the events as they would have happened the first time around (ie, he grew up as a looper which caused him to kill himself which caused him to go to China which caused him to meet his wife which caused her to die which caused him to go back in time which caused him to try to kill the Rainmaker which caused him to kill himself in the first place -- though none of this addresses Albino's highly valid point that the first cause for the Rainmaker's hatred of Loopers doesn't exist). Or did I read that wrong?

Sorry Chris, I've only just seen this now the thread has popped back up.

No, it does tell it in the way you say more or less, but those constituent elements are weaved together in a way that - at least through my lens - is intended to bamboozle the viewer a little. That was unnecessary as it didn't elevate the experience at all.

Totally agree that the film is very simple, but it felt like the director purposely made a stylistic decision to cultivate a narrative fog in order to lure the viewer into thinking about bigger themes - a fog I think unnecessarily engulfed the story with an unitended lack of clarity. It's fair to break up the puzzle, as long as sufficient clarity is reached at some point - but whether or not it was a lack of depth in the characters/story or simply a botched attempt at the job, I think the director fell short. I just think he should've let the story breathe a little. The ending would've packed a lot more resonance as a consequence.

I, like many others, had mixed reviews on this movie.

I enjoyed the 1st Act, thought it slowed too much in the 2nd Act, and had a short 3rd Act.

Some of the flaws that bugged me (and has been mentioned already):

- Sending the Looper back to be killed by yourself. Seems a bad idea. Should be sent to someone else.
- Why not kill the Looper in present day and send back body to be disposed off?
- Why not strip the Looper in present day and send back 100 million years?

Meh. I can live with these flaws.

What threw me off was that 2 stories emerged and seemed to struggle instead of living in harmony. It moves from a Time Travelling sci-fi thriller to a TK movie. I thought the pace changed too abrumptly and the focus moved away from what was originally setup in the 1st Act (premise) to a second 'mini' movie from the middle of the 2nd Act.

I ask myself... would that movie have worked without TK? My answer is Yes. I didn't see the need for it. It's like the original story/plot could not last a full movie and they needed some additional storylines.

As Heretic mentioned above, I did seem some deeper meanings about family, loss of life and loved ones, revenge, cyclical/heriditary violence, loneliness. That was the strong point to the movie.

A rambling review? Yes.

One Question that I didn't see answered above, which I am sure has a major impact in the story and Time Travel:

Shortly after we have Bruce Willis arrive in the past and escape, we have a quick shot of that scene repeating itself and JGL killing him (as originally expected). Then it jumps onward with the story of Willis on the run. Anyone else think about this scene and what it means????

edit - it seems Heretic did mention it above.

Mac

Can answer one question. The reason they cannot kill and then send the body to another time is because in that part of the future, authorities can instantly detect when someone is killed. They don't explain how, and they don't explain why it's not a problem when someone just disappears.

Why they would have a looper kill himself is something I could never figure out.

Nor why they don't just send someone back to a time when Earth was molten lava. Presumably there is a limit to where they loop to, but it would have to be a range, since they don't keep sending people back to the exact same time.

Quoted from leitskev Mac Can answer one question. The reason they cannot kill and then send the body to another time is because in that part of the future, authorities can instantly detect when someone is killed. They don't explain how, and they don't explain why it's not a problem when someone just disappears.

Right! I remember now - it was part of the opening dialogue. But, like you said, they never mentioned how and why.

I liked this film.  Like some others here I thought it was much deeper than your average action movie and wasn't at all about what you saw on the surface.  

I agree with the comments about looping being a sort of silly practice.  However,  I also think this movie wasn't meant to be taken quite so literally but more poetically.  If you think about it like a poem then the movie is actually quite beautiful and in that context it almost makes perfect sense.

I say almost because there was something nagging me about the logic used and I finally figured out what it was.   If you accept the whole looping concept, silly as it is, then when the looper's older self runs -- the gang grabs the young looper and mutilates him.  They do this because they don't want the older self changing time.   However, they themselves are changing time by mutilating the young looper.  I don't think their bosses would agree with that practice because any change the gang makes could easily affect their bosses in the future.  That to me was a major logic error.  

But I still like the film anyway.    

  

Saw this a week ago. I loved it. Often I don't have the energy to sit through the whole movie but this one kept me engaged throughout.

There was something that bothered me and it's (SPOILERS) why a killer has kill himself, why not someone else. But that's the only part. Maybe it's because I watched it in Russian and the translation wasn't great - but I totally missed why.

Otherwise - great twists. I loved the fact that the two - him now and him in 30 years are portrayed like different people, different minds, desires and the two ultimately work against each other - what a thought! For me the idea is simply great.

Loved it!

Kham,

I think it was explained in one of the V.O. speeches in the beginning of the film.

When a looper's contract is up and they send the older version back in time for the younger version to kill, they don't send him back to a different looper because there is a bigger payout attached.  They send the looper his "retirement pay" strapped to the older version.  Then from that point, he only lives 30 more years.

There is supposed to be a hood covering the face of the older looper, so the younger looper won't know he is "retired" until after he shoots the older looper and sees the retirement payout.

I hope that just doesn't cause more confusion.  

I liked the film.  Probably because I don't usually overthink sci-fi movies.  I just enjoy them for what they are... entertainment.

Quoted from DaveTroop They send the looper his "retirement pay" strapped to the older version.  Then from that point, he only lives 30 more years. There is supposed to be a hood covering the face of the older looper, so the younger looper won't know he is "retired" until after he shoots the older looper and sees the retirement payout.

Oh, okay, I remember they payed in silver bricks. Yeah, thanks! Makes great sense.