You would think there is only so much you could do with the concept of
time traveling but throughout the years, every now and then, more and
more movies with an original take on the genre have continued to pop
up. "Looper" is the latest in this line of movies, though I just have
to admit I wasn't as taking by this movie as most other people were.
The way I see this movie; It has a great concept but it doesn't really uses all of its potential. There was really far more they could had done with this movie and its concept, to make the story more awesome and even more original, with more layers added to it as well.
I could understand that by not making things overcomplicated and not explaining everything it avoided a lot of genre trappings and made the movie easier and more pleasant to follow for the main crowd. It besides gave the movie the opportunity to simply step over a whole bunch of stuff, so it could focus on telling its main story. But does it make a movie clever when its simply avoiding things? Not that's its lazy writing necessarily but it does make this a movie that leaves plenty of questions. When you truly start thinking about, you soon start to realize how flawed its main premise is and how some stuff just doesn't make any sense. But I guess this is simply being a movie in which you have to take most things simply for granted and just go along with the ride. This obviously also was the intentions of its film-makers and the approach they were aiming for.
Still I feel that the movie, by taking a somewhat more simplistic approach, is missing a couple of things in it. One of them is the earlier mentioned depth and multiple layers to the things that happen in its story and to its characters but another is also being the characters themselves. Seemed at first that the movie was going to have a whole bunch of potentially interesting and good characters in it but as the movie progresses, it starts to drop most of them and even the 'villain' played by Jeff Daniels gets pushed to the background.
It's perhaps true that the movie was simply more focused on telling the Joseph Gordon-Levitt's and Bruce Willis' character's story but the movie just never feels 'personal' and involving enough to fully let it work out. The movie would often pick a more 'quiet' and serious approach to things, as opposed to being just purely action-packed and entertaining. I'm still not really convinced this was the best approach for this movie to take. Besides, it also was hard and somewhat confusing who you were supposed to root for; Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Bruce Willis. Of course this was intentional and the movie kept throwing you off by brining in new facts into the story but it just wasn't always done in the best or most pleasant way, storytelling-wise.
It still was awesome and fun to see how much time and effort got put into letting Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like a younger version of Bruce Willis. Yes, they did id with some makeup and it also looks like some CG effects were used but it really is still foremost Gordon-Levitt's performance that make him a convincing younger Bruce Willis. His mannerisms, his style of acting, the way he speaks, he all made it his own. It's obvious Gordon-Levitt had a Bruce Willis-movie marathon back at home, before he showed up to act in this movie.
Definitely a perfectly watchable movie but still nothing to get all too excited about, in my opinion. It's somewhat lacking in both the storytelling and action department to consider this a perfectly entertaining genre flick, though it's still very well worth your time and money.
7/10
The way I see this movie; It has a great concept but it doesn't really uses all of its potential. There was really far more they could had done with this movie and its concept, to make the story more awesome and even more original, with more layers added to it as well.
I could understand that by not making things overcomplicated and not explaining everything it avoided a lot of genre trappings and made the movie easier and more pleasant to follow for the main crowd. It besides gave the movie the opportunity to simply step over a whole bunch of stuff, so it could focus on telling its main story. But does it make a movie clever when its simply avoiding things? Not that's its lazy writing necessarily but it does make this a movie that leaves plenty of questions. When you truly start thinking about, you soon start to realize how flawed its main premise is and how some stuff just doesn't make any sense. But I guess this is simply being a movie in which you have to take most things simply for granted and just go along with the ride. This obviously also was the intentions of its film-makers and the approach they were aiming for.
Still I feel that the movie, by taking a somewhat more simplistic approach, is missing a couple of things in it. One of them is the earlier mentioned depth and multiple layers to the things that happen in its story and to its characters but another is also being the characters themselves. Seemed at first that the movie was going to have a whole bunch of potentially interesting and good characters in it but as the movie progresses, it starts to drop most of them and even the 'villain' played by Jeff Daniels gets pushed to the background.
It's perhaps true that the movie was simply more focused on telling the Joseph Gordon-Levitt's and Bruce Willis' character's story but the movie just never feels 'personal' and involving enough to fully let it work out. The movie would often pick a more 'quiet' and serious approach to things, as opposed to being just purely action-packed and entertaining. I'm still not really convinced this was the best approach for this movie to take. Besides, it also was hard and somewhat confusing who you were supposed to root for; Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Bruce Willis. Of course this was intentional and the movie kept throwing you off by brining in new facts into the story but it just wasn't always done in the best or most pleasant way, storytelling-wise.
It still was awesome and fun to see how much time and effort got put into letting Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like a younger version of Bruce Willis. Yes, they did id with some makeup and it also looks like some CG effects were used but it really is still foremost Gordon-Levitt's performance that make him a convincing younger Bruce Willis. His mannerisms, his style of acting, the way he speaks, he all made it his own. It's obvious Gordon-Levitt had a Bruce Willis-movie marathon back at home, before he showed up to act in this movie.
Definitely a perfectly watchable movie but still nothing to get all too excited about, in my opinion. It's somewhat lacking in both the storytelling and action department to consider this a perfectly entertaining genre flick, though it's still very well worth your time and money.
7/10
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