Looper - Movie Review

Looper was besides "The Dark Knight Rises" and the upcoming "The Hobbit" the one i wanted to see the most this year. I love Bruce Willis. I love Joseph Gordon Levitt. I love movies where you need to think to grasp it fully and this could be such one since Inception. What could go wrong? Actually not that much, but the few things added up to a bitter taste in this otherwise super delicious sweet cake. Why the movie has such a small bitter taste and why i would call it the bread between "Inception" and "Matrix" will be explained in the rest of the review.

The idea behind Looper is as simple as it is original. Joe is a assassin who executes every target his boss gives to him through a time stream. Sending the victim back to the past makes it impossible to find the corpse and is a perfect crime, but has one problem, the assassin himself. He knows to much and will be the last target for himself. Afterwards he can live his life to the fullest till he reaches the moment he gets send to the past and kills himself. This system is not only a nice idea but also a great concept to play around with. What happens to your future self if you begin smoking? Gets he out of breath after a few seconds of running? What happens if you begin learning a new language? Could your future self master it in the future? Whatever the past self does impacts his future self. 

In the beginning of the film these effect is used to its fullest but at one point around the middle it completely lacks and all of a sudden the movies becomes a normal action flick just with two plots running along each other. Not until the grand final the effects introduced at the beginning show them selfs again. Thats a huge disappointment, because it worked so great for the beginning and end. One vague example for that would be that a scene was shown first to the past self and later on through the eyes of his future self who gets an advantage of knowing what will happening. It also is interesting to see how this changes the situation entirely.

The story itself has a got variety through the both storyline which complements each other. If one is more about talking and love the other adds action to it and the other way around. It has everything in it a good action movies needs like revenge, intrigue, love affairs and even some parts of humor, which were hilariously. The story is fast paced at the beginning and slows down at the middle as it is common in a lot of films. At the end you get an open ending which i didn't mind, because a part of the story is closed for the better good. What i mean by that can be seen in the movies, everything else could just destroy the experience watching it. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt do a great job in playing the same role. Joseph trained a lot to act like Bruce Willis and Bruce just was himself, which is everything he needs to do. Sometimes i ask myself what he would have done with his appreance if he not played bad ass characters? Maybe become a butcher? In a sense i exactly became that. :)

Everything i said so far sounds like it is a pretty good action flick with a original concept but that not everything it has. Firstly the film is stylistic as almost no other in recent years.It had a coherent art style like Matrix. The film felt as it was made out of one piece. Everything fitted in perfectly together. It felt like a cult film that we get only every five years.

The second thing is that the concept is also a nice metaphor for what is wrong with our current world. People want to much without having the necessary deeds for it so they get them self credit which they want to pay somewhere in the future, but then there a new things they want so they get another one to pay for them. In the end they load a huge debt on their shoulders just to have instant fun in the present by selling their future away. I don't know if Rian Johnson wanted to tell us with this movie but thats the message that got through to me.

My conclusion is that the film fulfill nearly my expectation i set in it and that it could become a culture hit over time like Matrix with the few grains of salt in the middle of it. It is a movie in which you need to think carefully to grasp everything thats happens and could happen. There is also one mystery character who could be guessed, which i got wrong. I can say that is not that predictable what will happens, much like the future itself. 

What do you think about the concept of the movie? Has it sparked your interest? Did you think I'm right with my interpretation of its moral?