Review of Looper (2012) by Sebdangerfield — 04 Oct 2012

To even begin watching Looper one has to discount the glaring plot hole which should make the film redundant. Then once you have gotten over this, you must suspend your disbelief once again and just accept the ride (less a rollercoaster, more a long boring motorway in a spluttering old volkswagen golf) without questioning further the plot as the director has quite cleverly written the film in such a way that any bizarrities that might pop up throughout can be never fully explained; only through vague guesses can one try to make sense of whats happening. The film itself is paced so unevenly that it made me uncomfortable, sometimes moving so fast as it aims to confuse, at other times crawling at a pace that makes snails look like time travellers. The world that is created is as one-dimensional as the characters. The director has a chance to delve deeper into the decaying society of the future, yet we know practically nothing; all we are given is about 30 seconds worth of lazy city shots and some extreme poverty, which is enough to get one interested but is inexplicably never expanded on. JGL is the stereotypical young reckless man, Bruce the stereotypical older and wiser man. What we are to learn from this is unclear and is about as deep as the main characters get (except at the end when for some reason one character has a change of personality over the space of a day or so). Blunt and JGL are not terrible actors in any way shape or form, and neither is Bruce Willis for that matter, however the direction results in some fairly hammy and uncomfortable acting and some scenes are plain unwatchable without seeing them in a humorous light.

All in all, this is a sci-fi film without a coherent sci-fi plot, a drama without character development, a thriller without the thrills and suspense and an action film without much action (apart from one scene which, again needs suspending disbelief to watch, where Bruce seems to think he is Die Hard, or even more likely the Expendables.