Looper

Well, nothing like an awesome movie to inspire a last minute Blip!

As always, there follow SPOILERS!









Yes, Monday I had a multitude of plans all of which fell apart because I didn't get the e-mail from Cineworld about the sneak preview of 'Looper' on Monday night. So instead of two hours of badminton, a shopping trip and settling down to watch 'The Raid' or 'The Cabin in the Woods' I instead found myself settling in for 'Looper' while hoping the 2.5 hours of badminton (yay for extra time!) hadn't turned me into the smelliest bloke in the cinema (and I sat on the end just in case...)

'Looper' is the latest movie from Rian Johnson, who previously wrote and directed 'Brick' and 'The Brothers Bloom'. I've not seen the latter, but the first also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (henceforth referred to as JGL) and is an excellent low-budget crime drama set in a high school - well worth checking out if you've never seen it.

'Looper' again stars JGL, this time as Joe, a specialist assassin known as a Looper who murders targets sent back in time by the mob - making them vanish without a trace in a future where any murders can be easily traced/tracked/what have you. He and every other Looper in the business only works up until the point they close their loop, which means they kill their older self. The money is enough that they can all live perfect lives, but the film starts to kick in when most of Joe's fellow Loopers start closing their loops, all well and good until one of them escapes after imparting some information about the future to his younger self. With this knowledge Joe sets out to fulfill a contract only to be faced by an unbound future version of himself (Bruce Willies) who subdues Joe and escapes - kicking off a hunt that can only end with the death of both versions of Joe.

Now there's much more plot but I don't want to give it away, I've not mentioned Emily Blunt's role at all, or Jeff Daniels, or the other supporting cast, so I'll just say that they're uniformly excellent in the movie. Big credit goes to Pierce Gagnon, playing a ten year old who may hold some of the secrets young Joe needs to figure out. Both JGL and Willis are great as well, JGL as the younger Joe who just wants to get on with his life (by ending his other's) and older Joe who wants to change the future for some rather poignant reasons - giving him a focus for a terrible mission he must fulfill.

Stylistically the film is great as well - combining high-tech ideas with rather low-tech designs - the Looper's blunderbusses look like pipes, the Gatmen's pistols look like futuristic six-shooters, there's telekinetics (who can only float quarters) and the time machine itself looked like a really weird colander - it all reminded me of another Willis time-travel-mind-boggler - 'Twelve Monkeys'.

Compared to the limited action scenes in 'Brick' it's nice to see that Johnson isn't afraid to take on more in 'Looper' - there's a great diner shoot out (well it was never going to end well when the Joes meet up for breakfast) and some excellent set pieces using both CGI and wire-work to great effect (well, I assume it was wire-work, it looked too good to be CGI, apart from getting rid of the wires...). There's also some fairly neat CGI where it comes to the demise of one of the targets, it's subtle and not in your face "look at me I'm awesome" - suits the film well.

I'm going to stop there because I have to keep some things for Saturday's show, and also because I really want to see it again without having thought too much about it. But to sum up - you have to see this film - it's getting some rave reviews in (5*s from Empire & Total Film) and I thought Simon from the show summed it up rather neatly:

There are some films where you remember where you were when you first watched them. Looper is one of those films. See it in the cinema if you can.