Joseph Gorden Levitt has a come a long way from the fruity-long-haired-gawky looking kid in 3rd Rock From the Sun to a sharp-dressed-slick-haired-gun totting adult we see on screen now.
The Looper is a science fiction movie which doesn’t exactly concentrate on the science fiction part too much. The story is set in the future and the past (Yup the best type of science fictions always are). In the year 2074 HG Well’s thoughts have finally come true and time travel is possible, but due to reasons beyond the movie’s scope of discussion it is illegal to use time travel (ethics and morality and all that jazz), and thus it is used a lot….illegally. The crime syndicate in 2074 is pretty snazzy and uses this to “dispose” of their enemies. They grab their guy in the future, send him back to present time (2034!) where a random person would be asked to stand at a pre determined time and place and would shoot whoever came in front of him…no questions asked.
Joe (our hero, J. Gorden Levitt) is one of these very men who kill for a living and are paid in silver for getting their hands dirty. The plot gets interesting when Joe sees himself kneeling in front of him (an older version albeit) and of course it’s ‘awkward’ having to shoot yourself, so he hesitates for a split second which is more than enough for “old” Joe (the ever young Bruce Willis) to take charge, knock the young Joe out and make a dash for freedom (or so it appears). And then the shit hits the fan.
I won’t give up more of the story, how else would the cinemas make their money 🙂
The story is a tad confusing but to its credit if you just pay a decent amount of attention to it, it would be crystal by the end. There is a sort of semi drudgery in the movie and at times it just seems to drag on, there are scenes that don’t add value and there are dialogues when silence does a darn good job of explaining what is going on, but then on the whole the movie makes it together. The whole concept is a well thought of one and the movie comes out with flying colors in my book.
Despite being a science fiction movie, the real selling proposition of it is not the cool future or the next generation gadgets (they kill people with a blunderbluss, with is like a vuvuzela with gunpowder). The real proposition of the movie is its cast, mainly the two leads who do a brilliant job as well as the fact that the real story of the movie isn’t showcased anywhere (read: In the trailers) and thus when you show up in the hall it’s not like you know what is the movie about. (I find that amusingly interesting). The plot is multifaceted and the characters are all well defined in it.
Rian Johnson (Writer/Director) steps into the big leagues with this movie (I believe it is his first real big movie after The Brothers Bloom) and does a real good job and gives me more ammo for my belief that that writers make really good directors. As far as the acting goes, the amount of make-up put on JG-L to make him look like Bruce Willis is incredible and frankly very distracting at times since you keep seeing him and imagining the fact,” Wow he really does look like Bruce Willis”. (Bruce Willis to his credit does nothing to look like GJ-LJ ). Levitt does a good job of being Bruce without it looking like he is aping him. Bruce Willis is….well….Bruce Willis. Action movies are something he could do in his sleep and he just goes through the motions like they are second nature to him now.
The rest of the cast is mostly to hold the story together with Sara (the gorgeous Emily Blunt best known for her role in The Devil Wears a Prada) taking a major chunk of the remaining screen time. She does a good job of acting like a soccer mom with a gun (A far cry from her role in TDWP) She obviously is no match for the Willis-Levitt combination but rises above the rest who are as mentioned mainly there only for holding the story. There are a few more members but if I start going into them I might as well just give you the whole story anyway 🙂
All in all its definitely worth a watch, if you are going to ask questions like “Why do they send them only 30 years in the past to get killed and not 2 billion years so that dinosaurs can eat them?” Which I honestly feel is a valid question, but then there are times you ask these and similar sounding questions like “How can a hero be faster than all the bullets and never get shot?” In either case I would say, “Go and watch Hanna Montana, she’s more suited to your tastes”. 🙂
Looper is definitely worth a watch and I would recommend you watch it.
Thoughts! 