Loopers Movie Review

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Just back from seeing Loopers. Enjoyed it but does it live up to the hype?

The acting is good with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce WIllis believable as Joe at different ages.  Emily Blunt and Pierce Gagnon play pivotal roles in shaping the younger Jo’s path.  Jeff Daniels, Garret Dillahunt and the rest of the cast provide excellent support.

The world of 2034 is a nicely realised future with dystopian elements and extrapolated tech.  Old cars retrofitted with solar panels and wafer thin smartphones.  Inevitably the ubiquitous flying vehicles are present to prove this is the future and not the past.  In this case they take the form of jet engine motorbikes.  Fashion has gone back to a slightly more formal look than we’re seeing right now but with a definite retro edge – a sort of mix of 50s and puritan.

Arming Loopers with weapons that are only good against a helpless target seems like a bit of an oversight on the bad guy’s part along with their sending only a single Looper to carry out and confirm each hit.

Plot wise it’s a fairly solid time travel story.  The plot’s pacing is good.  It mixes action and character development well.  It is neither too fast, relying on action to disguise a weak plot, or too slow, ponderously labouring every nuance of character development.  What it’s doesn’t really do is add anything to time travel stories.  The ideas it plays with have been around in short stories and novels for decades.

That for me would have been fine as it handles them well if it hadn’t been lumbered with claims of greatness.  For anyone who doesn’t read SF it’s probably going to have some nice surprises but for anyone familiar with the genre it’s not groundbreaking.

So personally I think Loopers is an enjoyable science fiction, action thriller and definitely above par that sadly someone tagged it with the hard to live up to “This decades The Matrix” tag.

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