Looper

Soo... I saw Looper last weekend and I've spent this weekend thinking about it and what my feelings are.

First off, there's a moment early on when you first see Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his Bruce Willis make-up where part of you genuinely freaks out a little and it's very uncanny valley. When I first saw the trailers I had the same reaction. But after a little bit you start to see the little smirks and eyebrow raises (at one point JGL checks his hairline in a mirror and I started giggling uncontrollably for about five minutes). After a little bit I was more enthralled with how well Gordon-Levitt plays Bruce Willis. And in the end he's as much playing Willis as he is playing the Looper character. He is supremely believable in the role and I totally bought the younger/older version of one person way more than I have in other movies.

So onto the plot which is more straight-forward than it seems. There are a group of Hitmen known as 'Loopers'. They sign up for a big paycheck in the present to kill people sent back from the future. They get their payout when they kill their Future-Self. Present-Person gets 30 years of fine living until their loop runs out and they get sent back to be killed by their younger self. In Looper, Future-Joe makes a run for it instead of waiting to be shot by his Present-Self. He goes on a quest to prevent some terrible things in the future, causing Present-Joe to have to chase him.

And that's all I want to say before I get into the serious spoilers I'm going to go into below.

There's an interesting question here that if someone gets hit by a bus 20 years in the future does their Present-Self have to work as a Looper that whole 20 years? They only get to quit when their loop closes so if their loop doesn't close do they have to work forever? Or does the Future-Mob send a note back on someone?

There is a great side-bit part played by Jeff Daniels that is absolutely fantastic but I don't want to give any of him away.

I walked out of this movie with mixed feelings (mainly because of the ending) but the more I think on it the more I just absolutely love it. The movie take a subject that any two geeks can argue for days about and presents it in a way that has a logical consistency to it. Which is impressive in and of itself. The human drama is okay and there are some pretty unexpected twists in there that I really enjoyed when they came around. I'm not sure it will make my list of top tem movies, but I'd definitely put it in the top 25.

I was going to mark out spoilers about my thoughts on the time-travel aspect but it's fairly long so I'm just going to put it under a cut instead. Spoilers Ahoy, click at your own risk!