Bruce Willis murdering children! What's there not to like?
DIRECTOR: Rian Johnson
CAST: Robin (TDKR SPOILER ALERT!), Bruce 'I'm too scared to insult him' Willis, Miss Piggy's receptionist, The Bible basher from 'There Will Be Blood', 'Dumb' Harry and a kid who can act more convincingly than Bruce Willis' wig!
PLOT: Explained in a fairly long montage/voiceover sequence by the effortlessly cool 'Joe' (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - time travel is invented in 2074 and immediately outlawed. However, gansters of the future that look surprisingly similar to gangsters of the 1930s, use time travel to send people that they want dead back in the past so that 'Looper's' (essentially hitmen) can shoot them in the chest with a 'Blunderbuss' (essentially a shotgun) in a corn field. But when Joe's future-self is sent back to be killed by him, well... let's just say that shit hits the fan.
Original ideas these days are growing increasingly harder to come by. Amazing original ideas sometimes seems a thing of the past, never knowing when the next time a film is going to come out of nowhere and mind-fuck you. So you could probably imagine my excitement when the trailer started to break out on the internet, and was assaulting the senses everytime there was an advert break on the television. The futuristic sounds of 'Optimus Prime' having an orgasm (dubstep, then), combining perfectly with the action-packed goodness left me with high expectations. Those expectations were well and truly met.
Made on a $30 million budget, which in the grand scheme of things in 21st century action/science-fiction cinema is that of a shoestring; I never had any doubts that Rian Johnson wouldn't pull something both entertaining and intelligent out of the bag after seeing his slick debut feature 'Brick' a number of years ago. And just like in 'Brick', the style really shines through, accompanying the action perfectly with eye-widening cinematography and slow-motion shots that would make Zack Snyder cream his pants.
The casting could not have been any better for this film. If Gordon-Levitt wasn't in the Hollywood A-list before Looper, well he's certainly been catapulted into it head-first now, and will most probably be the go-to guy for action films for the forseeable future. Bruce Willis, already a proven go-to guy, but hasn't always shown it lately, has reminded us that he is a bad-ass that shouldn't be fucked with. But there's no point trying to decide who is best out of the two, as they both play the same character and have infallible resemblance to one another. Whoever was in charge of making JG-L look like Willis deserves an awful lot of credit. Whoever made his wig however, deserves a comedy award. (Coincidentally, whoever made his wig simply ran over a squirrel and painted it black.)
The supporting cast is solid as well. Emily Blunt makes a good tired mother of her secret-holding crazy son who I thought was the kid from 'Big Momma's House 2' (don't worry, luckily for his sake, he wasn't.) It's also nice to see that Jeff Daniels can still be relevant if given the right opportunity as the sinister boss of the Looper's. And Paul Dano and Noah Segan round off a strong cast who are all a joy to watch, with fantastic dialogue and deep character development.
OVERVIEW: This is an exciting, entertaining, stylish and intelligent science-fiction which is up there with the likes of the 21st century cream of the crop; 'Moon', 'Source Code', 'District 9' and 'Children of Men'. I can't wait to see what both JG-L and Rian Johnson do next - either individually, or hopefully once again, in collaboration with each other.
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