I went to see “Looper” today

[xt1me]

I liked it.

Sure the actually time travel doesn’t hold up if you think about it for more then five seconds but the film is good enough that you don’t think about it. And they do get to wave it away by not explaining the time travel at all, which, I think, is the smartest thing to do with theoretical physics in movies.

It’s nice to see Bruce Willis in another time travel movie though. And being Bruce Willis, of course gets beaten up and covered in blood. Although since there are two Bruce Willis, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing a younger version of him, that’s split with Bruce Willis getting more covered in blood and Joseph Gordon-Levitt getting more beat up.

Speaking of, JGL doesn’t do a bad attempt at trying a Bruce Willis impression without going overboard. There’s enough of his mannerisms in the younger character in places that they could be the same person, though they look nothing alike despite the attempts of the make up department which were a little hit and miss. There were a few scenes were the make up look caked on.

One thing I liked was the cars. Admittedly I only noticed it from an art direction point of view but I like how the majority of cars looked beat up and had solar panels almost just glued on to them with wires going to the gas tank. It tells at a glance that the majority of people are poor and can’t afford new cars so they just modified the one they had as oil ran out. At no time is it ever mentioned that oil is scarce but the simple implication done with what looks like a reasonably cheap set of props really adds to the dystopian future feel they were going for. It got me thinking about how much of a budget they had. There was a nice feeling of ‘doing only what’s needed’ about the whole thing Even the flashy effects weren’t over the top. Though the movie certainly didn’t look cheap either.

As for the plot, it kept you engaged for the whole movie, and had an old school vibe to it, by which I mean: dystopian future, time travel, even a good ending’s going to make you a little sad. But it’s far from complex. They use the time travel as meant to, to propel the story forward not bog it down, and it had a sense of humour about it. Without spoiling any thing they was one moment were Bruce Willis shoots a pane of glass to dive out a window only to half miss when going though and smashing though some glass anyway.

And I did notice a bit were Bruce Willis wearing a badge that looks a little like the Hit Record badge that, since he’s playing an older JGL, made me smile.

A nice action sci-fi flick if you don’t want to think too hard (and not just about the time travel). Nothing lacking or anything tat takes you out of the movie. (Though after the end credits roll you can’t help but think: wait, if that happed shouldn’t that mean all of that couldn’t happen so that never happened in the first place. And what about that?)