Film Review: Looper

Directed by: Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt
Also featuring: Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo and Pierce Gagnon
Certificate: 15
Plot: Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) is a Looper, hired by criminals 30 years in the future to kill people, in order to hide the bodies without a trace. What Joe hadn't banked on, was that one of those people would be himself (Bruce Willis).
In the Future, Looper's are being killed-off by a mysterious man known as The Rainmaker, and Older Joe is set on getting to him as a child, before he has chance to grow up into the villain. Can the future be changed?
It's not often that a film comes along that receives five star ratings from both Empire and Total Film magazines. Reviews over on Rotten Tomatoes had been fairly optimistic to, so standards for this film were set high, with the comparisons raging quite early on with Twelve Monkeys and Donnie Darko for the confusing time travel elements. Having now seen the film, I wish I hadn't read the reviews, because they built up a lot of expectations and you know that a film is never going to live up to expectations that are too high!
Casting: Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been hotly touted as the finest talent of his generation, with a string of highly successful roles including in The Dark Knight Rises and Inception, and Looper was yet another opportunity for one of my favorite young(ish) actors to flew his talented acting strings. Whilst I found the whole "being a young Bruce Willis" makeup a little creepy, I loved how especially during his opening monologue, Gordon-Levitt managed to sound a great deal like his model, including the way Willis kind of breathes in the middle of speech. One thing that Gordon-Levitt taught me - and not necessarily in his favour - was the fact that Bruce Willis is definitely the only person who can get away with those cocky side-mouthed smiles that he is infamous for.
Bruce Willis, I'm not going to lie, felt a little like he wasn't putting in much effort. I'm not really sure, and I hate saying it, because I'm a big Willis fan, but he just didn't feel like he was pushing himself as much as I'd expect him to. Perhaps because this was Gordon-Levitt's film, I don't know, but he was still good no matter.
In the supporting cast, Emily Blunt put in a strong performance as young mother Sara, as did Jeff Daniels as Abe. However, the real scene stealer amongst the supporting cast was most definitely young Pierce Gagnon who played Sara's son; Sid. It's rare to find such a young kid who has such a strong scene presence, but Gagnon really did, and I can definitely see potentially big things in his future.
The Story: If you simply watch this film and take things as they are, this has a "sort of " straight forward story, but for me, it was when I sat down and start piecing things together that I realised how complicated it really is. The problem is that, as you might expect, time travel is always a mind-bender and it's the little things that start to unfurl and make me seriously question how much I really did understand the film.
Whilst I enjoyed the story, and thought it was a great idea, I have to admit that I felt incredibly let-down by the ending. Without giving anything away, when certain events unfolded I did find myself frowning and thinking "Huh, is that it?". At the end of a very hyped up film, the ending created an enormous disappointment for me, because I felt like the reviews had bigged up this film as if there were going to be a lot of twists and turns and surprises, and to be honest, it wasn't. When Young Joe figured something out, it was kinda like really? Are you really that slow? It was flipping obvious.
Score: My biggest overall disappointment, however, was the lack of a strong score. For me, score is almost as important as the casting and the story, so that was a big let-down.
Overall: A brilliant cast, combined with an excellent idea and plot blended to create an excellent film that was let down by a sub par ending and a lack of soundtrack. However, I honestly did enjoy this film and since everyone else seems obsessed with comparing it to other films, I'd say that Looper is a definite combination of Twelve Monkeys and Carrie.
I give this: 6.3 out of 10

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