Looper

Uh oh! Another JGL movie review! Quite aside from seeming like the most active guy in Hollywood right now, we can all relax on this one; spending 2 hours a day in make-up to make yourself look like a young Bruce Willis is never going to have the most appealing result, so Looper is going to have to rely on a whole lot more to get the grade from me.

The principle is beautifully original, and fabulously ingenious all in one. Time travel doesn't exist. Yet. As soon as it does (thirty years from now) it will immediately be made illegal, but not before crime bosses realise that it offers the cleanest and most elegant way of "dealing" with those unwanted nuisances. Cue the 'Loopers', the disposal men responsible for removing the victims of the future mob. Their targets are erased; killed in a time when they shouldn't have existed, and with no evidence of them in the future. For a Looper, each job is paid handsomely, with silver bars strapped to their prey. That is until their final job (called closing the loop), which results in the personal assassination of their future self, effectively granting them a thirty year time-delayed death sentence with which to enjoy their 'retirement'. And truth be told, everything is going pretty swimmingly, until Joe fails to close his loop, and allows his thirty-year older equivalent (Bruce Willis) to escape. Cue an unravelable twisting road of cause and effect, with both Joe's aiming to restore order to their respective times, and ultimately stay alive.

Things were always going to get ugly when it came to deciding who was going to pay the bill...

Now don't get me wrong; Hollywood needs more films like this. Looper is properly innovative (some people likened it to when the world was first introduced to the Matrix). Everything about it feels fresh, of course helped by the fact that it's a completely unique concept. But that does bring it's own issues. Being such a radically different (and as explained above) slightly convoluted storytype, the time required to set up the premise is so much longer than would be needed to introduce us to the world of an unpopular high-school teen, or a mis-understood billionaire with a penchant for saving the world. And unfortunately Looper's set-up does fall slightly foul of this. Because the concept is so complicated and unseen before now, the film has to spend too long trying to explain what's going on, and why it's important. As a result, the whole thing does feel fairly slow up front, even though there's plenty to be paying attention to. The whole thing also sets off on a much darker footing than I was expecting, which, although perhaps slightly too dark in places for my liking, do certainly provide an important background to the fuller story.

Thankfully though, despite the rather gritty (and lengthy) start, the movie quickly opens up into something so much better than I was beginning to fear 30 minutes in. Some rather expert writing and editing keeps up the suspense, only feeding answers in dribs and drabs, but keeping you guessing throughout. The cast should also get a special mention, with Emily Blunt's Sara of particular note (once you've managed to get over her southern drawl). In the end, for me the quirkiness and originality really win through. It may be slightly slow to get going, but when it does it more than compensates. Though a smidgen gorier than I would have liked in places, the story is well thought through all the way to the end (especially concerning the cause to effect relationship of changing the present to affect the future). With maybe a little more pace up front, this is the kind of film that we really need to see more of.