On every underground station, motorway billboard and bus across London electric blue posters for Looper scream 'Magnificent', 'A Brilliant Masterpiece', 'The New Matrix'. Clusters of five stars surround Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as they glare out steely eyed. The two most popular film publications in the UK, Total Film and Empire magazine awarded Looper five stars showering praise on Rian Johnson's sci-fi time travel mind-bender. On top of this Looper received wildly enthusiastic reviews from the most cynical of critics including The Sunday Times' Cosmo Landesman (three stars is excellent for him) and The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw - whom I have great respect for - awarded the film with four stars calling it "dizzying and exciting". So naturally after loving Brick and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in anything he does I sat down in Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue in central London with great excitement. I left the cinema flat, baffled by the adulation and plaudits and as the last few days have passed I have grown more bewildered.
First of all lets dispel that Matrix comparison. It is not even in the same ballpark. This is not a groundbreaking film by any stretch of the imagination: Looper is a time travel caper with a kid who could be in The Omen. The Wachowski's staggered the world in 1999 and no matter how lacklustre Revolutions was it will never be forgotten how marvellous and ingenious The Matrix is. Looper has set its ambitions at a far lesser scale but in fairness it cost $30m and the Wachowski's set a pretty damn high benchmark.
Rian Johnson has built a futuristic dystopia in 2044 Kansas that is populated with streets of destitute homeless scavengers pushing trollies, faces blackened with hardship. Although nothing particularly new Johnson creates a world of flashy cars and clubs for the 'Loopers' (people hired to take out hits for the mob - the twist being that the victims are sent from the future where time travel has been invented and immediately made illegal (2074 to be precise) so as to erase the existence of the victims altogether). Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of these Loopers tasked with the admittedly simple job of standing in a isolated location at an exact time and when the victim - sent back hogtied, hooded and helpless - pops out of thin air the Looper shoots, incinerates the body and collects the silver bricks tied to the victim's back. This is the currency of 2044 and is just one of the few ironic touches of satire in the movie. Bricks for money - antiquated. Some members of the population can levitate objects...but it's limited to floating quarters over their palms. There are space bikes that can fly but Paul Dano's doesn't work. In fact the city doesn't look vey different from 2012 Kansas apart from the mass poverty and desperation. Unsurprisingly the Loopers all take eyedrops that are some kind of hallucinogen and Levitt's Joe is seeing a hooker who works at the main club that is a gaudy red blot on the otherwise grey hopelessness of the city. Jeff Daniels plays Abe, the mob's man sent from the future to control operations in the past. It's a neat concept, improved by the fact that a Looper's life is fragile - the mob can close your loop at any time. And here is where the main plot comes in and perhaps the most ingenious part of Johnson's script: the said Looper is sent from the future for the young Looper to kill himself meaning that Looper knows they will die in thirty years. To soften the blow of killing yourself and living with the knowledge of when you will die. The mob kindly rewards you financially so you can live your life out in luxury wherever you want. Levitt's problem is he's let his older self escape but then that is somewhat understandable as that man is John McClane! So the plot actually isn't so complicated but it's engaging: what is Old Joe's mission? Oh the trailer has told us already sigh. Willis has returned to find the Rainmaker, some guy who is closing all the loops on Loopers in 2074. Willis's intention is to find the young boy who will become the Rainmaker and kill 'em. A messy slide to the future showing young Joe's transformation into Old Joe (Levitt to Willis) shows off a flashy Shanghai (the new 'In' location for action movies) and a bemusing romance between Willis and a Chinese woman played by Qing Xu. From this we understand Willis's intentions are not entirely selfless.
The centrepiece scene and possibly the highlight of the movie is the conversation between Willis and Levitt at a rundown diner outside Kansas that provides witty repartee and allows Willis to flesh out his character. The idea of sitting face to face with yourself knowing them and yet not knowing them is a fascinating and deeply troubling one yet Johnson's film, from the moment the two Joe's escape the diner following an ambush, loses all momentum and intrigue.
Levitt's young Joe finds refuge on Emily Blunt's fiery farm where she lives with her initially innocent looking nine year old boy. And this is where the film plays out its final third - amongst the corn fields of Kansas. Seemingly this would be an ideal landscape to create tension but Johnson never utilises it. Instead we cut back to Willis's Old Joe hiding out in the city pointlessly looking for the other two kids that could be the Rainmaker - pointless because it is obvious who the Rainmaker is through scenes that appear to be stolen from any number of demon child horror movies. Blunt is a tremendous actor as is Levitt but a scene in which she calls him up to her room to have sex rings hollow not to mention it feels tacked on and isn't even sexy - unforgivable considering the actors on show.
It all ends in predictable fashion after an oddly jarring and dull shooting spree from John McClane kills basically everyone apart from Noah Segan's Kid Blue who takes on the mantle of the scorned idiot who wants revenge on Joe for humiliating him: rarely has there been a more tiresome character than this guy and the worst thing is when he comes to disrupt the final showdown between the two Joe's I just wanted the inevitable conclusion to happen so I could leave the cinema but this Kid Blue imbecile was slowing it down!
It's hard to know what box to put Looper in because it starts in a depressing and violent fashion but the Kansas Johnson creates gets forgotten about halfway through the movie and the story isn't strong enough to allow for no visual flourishes or no surprises. When you go and see a horror movie you generally know where it's going and it's cool, you accept the genre's limitations but with Looper I wanted more than just a troubled kid with telekinesis in a field. Willis is on McClane mode only waking up to inject the diner scene with some much needed fire. Levitt does a typically good job in the main role but he's been more interesting in TDKR and Brick and far more fun in Premium Rush. Blunt devours the scenes she's given but the film drops off to such an extent when she arrives that it is hard to enjoy her performance. Jeff Daniels Abe drifts through the film whilst side characters like Paul Dano's Seth are mere plot fodder.
Looper is a warm film in a way. Levitt carries that throughout and Blunt brings in the theme of nature versus nurture as she desperately tried to protect her boy. And yet I didn't truly care about either Joe. Levitt reveals little bits of backstory but not enough to flesh him out and as for Willis - well he's lived his life (rather unconvincingly ending up with a Chinese angel). The serious lack of humour doesn't help, apart from a running joke about young Joe learning French the script lacks bite.
Looper is a solid film that has stolen from too many other films to feel remotely fresh. The question I always ask myself when I leave a theatre is 'Would I see this again?' and the answer to Looper is a definitive NO. Looper is a film without genuinely exciting action or inspiration: it feels like it has been sent through a loop of old films and come out the other end recycled, dull and derivative.
Or is it just me?
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