In Looper, the long-awaited re-teaming of star and writer-director from Brick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who also acted as executive producer and Rian Johnson, respectively), a self-centered assassin basically has the easiest job in the world. At an assigned time, he shows up at a pre-defined location (same one, every time) and kills whoever appears in front of him.
And he still manages to screw it up.
Verdict
Good, but not worth a seven year wait.
It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Rian Johnson’s first feature film, Brick. He spent five years in pre-production, and it shows in every scene and in every line of dialogue.
Three years later, he made The Brothers Bloom (mixed reviews, I haven’t seen it), and he did some television.
Looper was a reunion between him and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who starred in Brick. That film and Mysterious Skin (2004) gave Gordon-Levitt and adult acting career after five years on Third Rock from the Sun.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but that’s okay because it gives me a great opportunity to talk about context.
As you’re probably sick of me reminding you, all stories are about a character in a context with a conflict who takes action either to run away from the conflict, or to face it.
Looper is rich in character and in conflict, but where it falls down is context.
I’ve talked a lot about character and conflict (plot) in this column, so today I’m going to focus on context.
First, the gold standard for context in movies is Blade Runner. I’m sure every visitor to this site has seen the director’s version, without Harrison Ford’s voice-over. You know the context works. It seems like a complete world.
How do you know context works? A buddy of mine once said that you have to feel like if you looked out a window, something unrelated to the central plot would be happening. Blade Runner succeeds in that respect.
Looper doesn’t. For example, what the Hell is up with Telekinesis and “the TK Gene”? I suspect that it’s a retrofit needed to justify Cid’s existence. If you have to retcon your own story to justify later events, you’re screwing up.
It would have been far more powerful for Old Joe (Bruce Willis) to come back from a future where TK exists and Cid is the first sign of what’s to come.
I mean, Cid is scary. Guys who float quarters around to pick up girls are, as Young Joe points out, just tacky.
Then there’s nanotechnology. In the future, everyone has nanotechnology in their bodies that let’s the government track them and know when, or if, they die.
Really? That’s all you could think of? I bet it’s not. I bet there were much better ideas. Again, this feels like a retcon that exists to justify why the mob sends its victims back in time.
Seriously, folks: Nanotechnology is technology. Technology can be hacked. One of the brakes on nanotech now is that hackers would tinker with it, for good or ill.
Imagine a more interesting movie in which the hackers alter the government nanotech to make people more durable, stronger, and faster; to improve their senses and to heal injuries more quickly.
On top of that, nanotechnology intrigues engineers and scientists today because it is self-replicating. In fact, unless the government periodically gives update injections to everyone, nanotech has to be self-replicating to stay in bodies.
That means, folks, that it’s infectious. While it probably can’t survive for long outside a body, Loopers constantly come in contact with bodies from the future, bodies with gaping holes blown in them by those same Loopers. Every Looper should be infected with the same adaptive, self-replicating, nanotech.
Since the Loopers spend a lot of time screwing hookers, they’re spreading the nanotech infection.
Not to mention that Abe is actually from the future. He should be full of that same nanotech, and you can’t tell me that a mob boss kept it in his pants the whole time.
I could go on forever about the nanotech alone, there are so many implications ignored by the film.
I could go on and on about the impoverished world of the film, but I’ll leave you with one more major context hole. Where the Hell is the government in all of this?
Abe and the Loopers do whatever they want in the film’s present, without fear of law enforcement interference. In fact, there are several scenes where it appears the cops showed up to help out Abe and the Gat Men. So why, in the future, does the mob care if the government notices when people die?
The central premise of the film is that only criminals control time travel, and that time travel is a one-way street. Surely, the mob could think of better things to do with time travel than just dispose of unwanted people.
In fact, that whole idea, is ridiculous after a moment’s thought. If the government knows when you die because of a signal from your nanotech, it should be able to notice when your nanotech signal vanishes because you went back in time.
Either the government is a viable threat, or it’s not.
The movie tries to have it both ways.
Looper, as a film, is full of amazing, interesting, mind-blowing ideas, none of which are fully though-through or developed. The entire movie exists to justify one scene: When Old Joe sits down across from Young Joe in the diner and they talk.
It’s the high-point of the movie, and it happens too soon.
Overall
The point I’m trying to get across to you is that context is just as important as character and conflict. Context is what keeps our imaginations in the movie.
Without character and conflict, we get bored.
Without context, we get distracted from character and conflict.
Dana Stevens called this a “maddening near-miss”, and I’m inclined to agree. We needed more of Old Joe and Young Joe. We need to focus less on the ethics of killing children and more on free will versus pre-destination.
If you can turn your brain off and enjoy the pretty pictures (and good acting), you’ll probably enjoy Looper.
Did I mention that Piper Perabo plays a stripper?
