Looper - Rian Johnson

Seen for the first time in the theater in October 2012.

I liked this a lot. I loved “Brick,” and so greatly anticipated another film with Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt working together. It’s not quite as unrelentingly great as “Brick,” but it has moments a few moments of style and cool that nearly match it. The dude who played Dode in “Brick” is great in this as well.

I’m not saying I didn’t like the cute little kid in this, but I feel like maybe there has never been a great movie with a cute little kid in it, unless the Cohen’s “True Grit,” counts. Cute little kids as movie elements are sappy and pandering in a bad way. And so when they appear in even a good movie, one can’t help having a reflexive eye-roll. We feel a bit nudged into the movie-for-parents category despite the otherwise stylish sci-fi thuggery.

That is for sure the closest thing this movie has for a weakness though, and not the flimsiness of the premise about loopers closing their loops, or of course time-travel headaches. It’s troubling at first, but once the film kicks into gear, we look past it easy enough and enjoy the thrills. The ending doesn’t completely make sense to me either. I mean, how did the events on that farm change the future to the extent that Bruce Willis gets sent back in time with a bag over his head and is shot by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (this happens about 20 mins into the film)?

Well the thing is, I don’t really care We get a happy ending. And we can feel sappy about a little kid and his mom. And we don’t have to be brought down by Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Bruce Willis’s resulting anguish in this version of the future, unless we want to. I just don’t know how Bruce Willis knows to go gently into that good night this time around.

I think it’s that ending though which keeps me from loving this movie. The little kid element is too much for me. The ending feels James Cameron, which is not a good thing. Also I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt a lot as an actor. I somewhat wish they made Bruce Willis look like him instead of the other way around. There’s something about that dude made up to look like Bruce Willis that seems vaguely mongoloidal.

Nonetheless this is a very good and entertaining movie. It’s an action film where I don’t actually care about the action, except for the kid’s telekinetic powers. But instead its strengths lie in the way characters interact. Rian Johnson has a very real talent for what I will call stylized thug interaction in these incredibly contrived worlds he creates. It does not matter that, even by time travel movie standards, the gaps in logic are gaping and the incoherence is enormous. Grade B+.