Film Friday: Looper (2012)

Rotten Tomatoes gives Looper a 93% fresh rating and describes the consensus thusly: “As thought-provoking as it is thrilling, Looper delivers an uncommonly smart, bravely original blend of futuristic sci-fi and good old-fashioned action.” Well. . . no. Yes, it is “as thought-provoking as it is thrilling,” but that’s because it registers close to zero on both counts. It’s not uncommonly smart either, nor is it original. Still, I’m going to recommend you see it. Why? Allow me to explain.

** MAJOR spoiler alert **

Plot

Looper takes place in 2044 in what appears to be Robocop’s Detroit moved to Kansas. Crime and drug use are common and people get paid in silver and gold bars for some reason. The story follows a “looper” named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). A looper is someone who kills people for the mob. Apparently, in the future, it will be nearly impossible to get rid of a body. Why? Who knows, that part of the film isn’t developed. Fortunately for the mob, one-way time travel has been invented. So they send the people they want killed to the past and the loopers shoot them and get rid of the bodies. They are called “loopers” because at some point each looper will be sent their future selves to be killed. At that point, they get a bunch of money and can live happily for thirty years until they are sent back to be shot by themselves. That’s called “closing the loop.”

Joe is a looper and one day he is sent his furture-self (Bruce Willis), but Bruce-Joe gets the drop on Joe-Joe and escapes. So now the mob tries to hunt down both Joe and Bruce while Joe hunts down Bruce to redeem himself with the mob. In the meantime, Bruce is trying to stop a mysterious and powerful person from taking over the mob and closing all the loops, which will result in Bruce’s wife being killed by accident. As Joe hunts Bruce, Joe discovers this mob boss as a kid who comes across like Damien Thorn. Some stuff happens.

Um. . . Yeah

This movie has lots of problems. It is a plodding predictable film that takes place in a bleak but uninteresting setting. Joe is not an interesting or likable character either. Bruce is more interesting, but the film barely delves into his story. There’s no tantalizing look into the future either, and most of what happens in the film feels like it was inserted just to make the plot work. For example, the film is set in 2044, but it might as well be 2012 since the clothing, the buildings, and the cars all look like 2012. BUT, one character just happens to buy a hovering motorcycle. This bike totally feels out-of-place in the film because it is the only “futuristic” vehicle in the film - everyone else drives circa-2012 cars, with Chevrolet’s Silverado featuring prominently. Nor is the bike new, it looks ancient, so there should be others, but there aren’t. So why include the bike? Because a character will need it later in the film.

Similarly, for no reason I can see, the loopers are given guns called “blunderbusses” which are shotguns that only shoot about twelve feet. The other mobsters carry chunky home-made looking revolvers called “gats” which have longer ranges but aren’t accurate - no one in this film can hit the broad side of the barn. It’s never explained why anyone would use these guns instead of the much better guns we have today, but the reason appears to be that the film needed to limit the range Joe could shoot at the end and the accuracy with which Bruce could shoot. That’s it. And don’t think it’s because our guns don’t exist anymore because they do. We know this because Bruce just happens to find a couple (Herstal P90) when he needs a machine gun to take down a bunch of mobsters. Again. . . because he needed it.

Much of the film feels this way, with things getting tossed in only because they make a plot point work. Why does Joe have a drug habit? So the woman he meets will sympathize with him. It’s then forgotten. Why do the loopers kill themselves rather than sending them to another looper? Just to cause the movie. Damien’s powers are the same thing. It’s enough that he grows up to be the guy who causes Bruce’s wife to be killed, so he doesn’t need unique special powers to make the story work. . . but they make the ending work, so he gets them.

It feels like the writer wrote the film backwards. It’s as if he wrote the ending and then decided to plant things in the story to make the ending work: “Hmm, if Joe can shoot farther, then he can stop Bruce. . . better give him a gun with limited range. Ok, so the loopers get guns with limited range. Problem solved.” When a film is full of things that only exist to make the plot work, then you’re dealing with a writer who doesn’t have a firm grasp on his story. Heck, they don’t even need the “close the loop” idea, not with Bruce’s motive to change the past, because Bruce could just hijack the time machine to carry out his mission.

As if that wasn’t enough, the film isn’t thought-provoking either. The film thinks that telling you that time travel can create paradoxes should impress you. Good grief. It also commits the cardinal sin of doing something that’s been done before without adding a new twist. In particular, we discover that Bruce’s wife gets killed because Damien sees Bruce kill Damien’s mother, which starts the circle which leads back to Bruce’s wife being killed, which leads Bruce back to killing Damien’s mother. This is Twelve Monkeys, only not as clever.

The film also tries the “If you met Hitler as a child, would you kill him?” routine, but it adds no new twist. Even worse, it’s mishandled because we’re never sure what is really happening. Joe tells us that Bruce killing Damien’s mother will make Damien evil. Thus, stopping Bruce will stop Damien from becoming Damien. But Damien is pretty clearly already evil. And Bruce’s wife was killed by accident when thugs came to close the loop, which would have happened whether Damien was in charge or not. So the whole thing feels like a fraud. It would have been interesting if the film had played up this uncertainty, but it didn’t. Instead, it basically said, “Look, just accept this, I don’t want to bother explaining it or exploring it.”

What bothers me even more though is that the writer constantly tries to cover the films flaws rather than correct them, i.e. he’s LAZY. For example, the film “cheats” by breaking the paradox so the film can be solved. This is done by showing a guy losing his limbs as his younger self gets dismembered. This should change the guy’s past, but it doesn’t. That means the paradox is not real. YET, the writer has a character tell the audience at that moment that they can’t kill the younger guy because that would change the future. . . as if dismembering him wouldn’t. Basically, the writer is trying to sell you on the false idea that the paradox is still real, even though it can’t be, because without the paradox the ending is nonsense.

If the writer did this only once, then it could be forgiven, but it happens over and over. When you notice that 2044 looks a lot like 2012, a character says, “All you kids today copy the old styles, you should do something original,” as if the set design was the result of some stylized choice rather than budget. When you ask who in their right mind would become a looper knowing they will need to kill themselves, Joe suddenly mentions that “this job doesn’t tend to attract the most forward thinking individuals,” as if anyone lacked that much foresight. The whole movie feels like this. Every time you stumble upon a problem, there is some character there to try the Jedi mind-trick on you. . . “Pay no attention to the fact this is nonsense.”

All of this feels like cheating to me. It feels like nothing in this film is thought out. Nothing in this film is original and nothing will surprise you. Nothing rises to the level of making your brain say, huh, that’s neat. Nothing gets your heart pounding in suspense. Too much time is wasted on passing time. They don’t even handle the few good ideas they have well – there are about three good lines of dialog and five interesting moments and the director fails to exploit all of them. This is a really hard movie to like.

Bonus Round: Why You Might Want To See This Film

Ok, so why am I recommending you see this turkey? Well, there’s an interesting moment in the film. After Joe fails to kill Bruce, the film suddenly and inexplicably shows Joe killing Bruce, and then you follow Joe’s life until he becomes Bruce and gets sent back to be shot. My first thought was that this is just a lousy writer trying to show us Bruce’s story in some cool way that doesn’t actually make sense. But it could be more than that.

Consider this: it is impossible for Joe to solve the paradox the way he does unless there is no real paradox, because otherwise, Bruce would vanish, Joe would have no reason to do what he does, and the whole thing would start over. . . they are called paradoxes for a reason. Anyway, what if the point to the film was that you can’t change your history, but you can change your future. Thus, both Joe and Bruce can alter their own futures, but Bruce’s past can’t be changed. In other words, anything done to hurt Joe would affect Bruce from this point forward, but wouldn’t have affected him in the past. This would fit with the dismembered man. As the young man is dismembered the older version notices the changes in real time, even though they should just have been part of his past. His past also clearly should have changed, but it doesn’t. Perhaps that is the idea hidden inside this film? If so, it is an interesting and original idea.

Sadly, however, I doubt this was the film’s intent. For one thing, it’s not developed or discussed in the film. For another, the evidence upon which this is based could just as easily be more evidence of lazy writing. And since the writer has proven himself to be lazy, it is more likely that he just didn’t have a handle on the loop idea. Still, it’s an interesting possibility. That’s why I recommend at least seeing the film.

Thoughts?