Looper
Hey! Guess what?! I saw a movay! (Actually saw two this week. Took V/H/S off the On Demand over the weekend and I thought it had some good scares built in if you can deal with cheap Paranormally stuff. Worth it if you're bored and insomniacal.)
Anyway, headed out the other night to meet a friend for a 10:15PM show of Looper. Picked up a couple tallboys and some Twizzlers and stuff. The theater wasn't all that crowded and I was happy to grab a seats in the first row of the middle section. Tis my favorite row because in front of you is just a wall and you can put our feet up on it. I scrunched on down and put em up. Comfortable. I notice that one seat over a random guy did the same thing. Feet up. And I saw we had the exact same sneakers.
These kind:
I look over to give the guy a 'Same shoes, huh?' type of shrug. But when I see what he looks like and I immediately feel weird. He looks just like me. Bald with stubble. Wearing glasses. Hoodie sweatshirt too. Almost exactly like me but younger. Quick eye contact then it was all eyes front. Awkward. Whatever idea we had that we had any kind of unique bald guy "look" was like squished. The only difference was I was the cooler one because I had beer. If you consider that sort of thing "cool" in a movie. Which most people don't. So there's that.
Anyway, I settle in to watch this movie about a guy dealing with a younger version of himself. Or vice versa. This movie starts up and when I first heard the setup I had to immediately shush my picky brain from yelling out eyerollingly annoying questions inside my head.
Premise dealio of Looper is this: In the future, time travel is illegal so the only people that use time travel are criminals -- and (get this) the only reason the criminals use time travel is to dispose of bodies they don't want lying around. So they send them back in time to be erased or whatever. It's a big enough bite to swallow that only criminals time travel -- but the idea that they don't use it for actual big crimes is a much tougher question. It's like biting down on something and finding out it has an unexpected flavor in it.
Plus, I had to readjust my brain to move past the weird face job they did on whatshisface. I get that he's supposed to look like Bruce Willard but it was a hard distraction out of the gate. Especially because he really didn't look anything like Bruce Willard regardless of making him try to look like Bruce Willard. (btw-- not one hair loss joke?) It actually wasn't the fake nose or whatever else they did that bothered me. It was the eyebrows. Throughout the movie there was a constant thing going on with the eyebrows to the point where I felt they should have just gotten it over with and sent the guy to get some waxing done to put it to bed. But whatshisface did a surprisingly solid job of imitating Bruce. With the squinty sideways face and half-exhausted tone. Pretty spot on. So that helped.
And fortunately, this movie is solid enough that once the story starts it gets past the wonky setup -- it really clicks into gear. Smelled fresh. Noir-ed out. It's smooth for the first 45 minutes or so. I was checking boxes on my checklist left and right pretty psyched about it. Enough was going on that it kept my logic circuitboard from ligthing up and pointing out endless stream of this and that nonsense when it comes to time travel. It was all good for a stretch. Big boomy guns. Chases. Future-y stuff. Some smart talking. And an always welcome bearded Jeff Daniels chewing up the desk and walls like a pig.
But after the one hour point I gotta admit I noticed something that started to creep up on me. As much as I liked the newness of what this flick seemed to be about -- I didn't care about it. Or anyone in it. I was already done with it. I just sort of wanted them to start closing the loops and letting me out of there. Sort of like when you're reading a book and all of a sudden you hit a wall on it. And for whatever reason you put it down half-way through and never get back to it. Not the books fault necessarily. Quality book with sharp writing and stuff -- but I had the feeling like I knew how this is all going to go and didn't care enough about the characters to appreciate the 'quality' in the writing.
And at the end, the movie double dares me to backtrack and line up all the pieces and sort out the logic and close the loops in my head -- I kind of dabbled in that game. But the movie on a hole didn't motivate me to put in the effort to figure it all out -- because I knew when push comes to shove it was full of loops that were shaped like C's . Easily wriggle-outable. And lack of emotional involvement just killed the desire to imagine what happened before or what happens next in the first place.
Three Good Things About this Movie
- I dug the gritty noir detectively underbelly stuff.
- The kid was a real actor.
- I liked it when the guy fell apart.
Three Bad Things About this Movie
- It's a sunny day jigsaw puzzle. I like em rainy.
- Most of the time spent on the farm was boring.
- The narrator was where then?
All in all, this is a pretty decent sci-fi movie. Like a pole vaulter that hits the top bar -- it's real impressive that they could get up that high. But they still hit the bar. And even though the landing was graceful and all that. It doesn't really count. Especially because for a 'thinker' style movie-- a month from now it will be forgotten as if it never happened.