Looper

Starring: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Directed by: Rian Johnson

Rating: I Liked It

I think my two favorite topics for movies to deal with are post-apocalyptic scenarios and time travel.  This one hits on the latter, and it does it somewhat differently than other movies.  I'm not going to get into the debate over time travel, other than to say that I generally think of it as Einstein suggested: time isn't a straight line like we often perceive it, but it's more like a circle...or loop, if you will.

That is to say, the me that's typing this blog, will still be doing it when the me that goes on break is eating lunch in the next hour.  There's always a me that's a little behind where I'm at right now and a me that's a little ahead.  Even with that in mind, you can make arguments.  For example, in Time Cop it's suggested that you can't travel into the future, because it hasn't happened, yet, but if that's the case, how can you return to a future that hasn't happened when you travel backward in time.  I digress on the topic, though, and I present you with this argument Old Joe (Willis) makes in the in the movie.

The Good:

• Wills, as always, performs best in his action star role, giving us a cross between John McClain and Frank Moses.  
• Gordon-Levitt gets to show another side of his acting skill set, and he does a great job portraying a younger Joe.  I can see how, especially with the facial prosthetic, the similarities between the two versions, young and old.  
• The story is a plausible one.  If this technology existed, you can bet that criminal organizations would find a way to exploit it.  
• Jeff Daniels, as Abe, the boss from the future, is spot on in the role.  
• A lot of thought seemed to go into creating the process through which the entire Looper organization would work, and it's those details that make it believable.  
• The side story of the characters that have TK (telekinesis) that eventually gets wrapped into the main story doesn't predominate the movie, and really isn't even a central figure, until it needs to be.  

The Bad: 

• I didn't care for Noah Segan's performance.  It wasn't that I didn't like his character; I just didn't like him.  
• I found it a little odd that, with all the information Old Joe had, he couldn't figure out that the decisions he was making were leading to the future he was trying to avoid.  This is a pretty common theme in time travel flicks, though.  

The Ugly

• Nothing ugly about this one, I just found it to be a decent movie all around.