Director: Rian Johnson
Talent: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano
Release Date: 28th September 2012
Rian Johnson is a “unique Hollywood voice” of uneven quality but undeniable ambition. Looper, as a big, serious action film, rights some of the directorial wrongs of Brick and The Brothers Bloom: marvel as Johnson capably writes a decent female character and shoots some high-octane scenes with momentum and genuine imagination! Unfortunately, Johnson’s vision of the near future is not nearly rich enough to be cinematically engaging: it looks like the present except with more scrap metal, yokes have been replaced with eye-drops and in the first five minutes, it’s mentioned that some people have telekinesis now, but it’s only ever powerful enough to levitate coins (how credulous are you w.r.t. film voiceovers, viewer?). Gordon-Levitt’s nose and eyebrows are, unfortunately, as unconvincing as a time-travel narrative in which only violence/murder has a real function across the past-present-future divide. Looper’s sentimentality, too, feels contrived, and grates in the final third, but this is undeniably entertaining, worthwhile stuff.
