Looper: A review

Last week, my roommate Pammy arrived home proclaiming, "Looper was good. Watch it. It has this Inception-like feel to it. You will like it." Which, of course, piqued my interest.

And last night, I finally watched the film with two friends. As is with any time-traveling story, Looper was mind-boggling.

The story was centered around a Looper, Joe, who was an addict. Haha. I'm sorry, that was what first came to mind. Not the fact that he was swift, fast, and downright cute. *forgive the girl gushing* To give you a brief background, I might need to spill some spoilers. So, continue at your own risk.



Loopers are hired assassins who work for an organization from the future. (Click this link for the Wikipedia article.) Thirty years into the future, time-travel was already invented. But it was eventually banned. (Why ban a technology? A teacher once asked me. I had no answer then. Perhaps this might be a perfect counterexample.) So, only highly organized crime syndicates have access to it. They transport bodies of people they want dead, back into the past, where technically, these people were nonexistent. It was a prerogative in the future to have tracking devices, so disposing a dead body was a challenge. And time travel was the perfect solution. For them.

Then I thought, why hire someone from the past, when you can kill the person in your time frame, then dispose of the body by throwing it back into time. And let the past people dispose of dead bodies popping out of nowhere. Then you won't have to pay for the loopers. But, I retaliate this idea with, a crime is done in your time frame. Someone is bound to get caught. Time traveling a person alive may not even count as a crime. You're not really killing someone. But perhaps committing another act of insurgence.

Back in the movie house, this never failed: I was always startled when men from the future are thrown back into time, and the looper had to fire from the Blunderbuss. It was like some sort of camera trick, you had to record a scene, pause, get some disposable man character on sack, shoot (can mean two different things. Hihi.)

The story was pretty easy to spot. One time, Reinzy, one of my companions asked, how will they [loopers] be paid [by the employers], since the bosses are from the future? [And I thought of how it would've been a long distance relationship: My boyfriend/girlfriend lives in the future. Haha. Kidding aside,] I answered, they must have time-traveled the money. Ah! They could strap it with the bodies. Then, it turns out, I was right - they strap silver bars with the bodies. Gold - if you've closed your loop.

Time traveling, it's been a topic I strongly have problem with. I can never accept how what happened in the past is not the history in the future for a single timeline. But  in retrospect, once I get the concept of multiple timelines, I can perhaps reconcile the string of events. It's like, a Mobius strip, only with much more loops.

Then there's Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the role of young Bruce Willis. I find JGL much too lanky for Bruce's mid-heavy built. But the prosthetic to have the nose look a bit alike was not too shabby.

Another thing that is of grueling discussion would be Abe, the mob boss who was from the future. If he was truly from the future, couldn't he have seen all that happening. Then I console myself into thinking, well, he might've been from a future of a different timeline. So, in his past, the escape of Old Seth and Old Joe may have not happened at all, lest he could have warned the Young Loopers of these instances. Case closed. Wait, I take that back. Will his account of the past change, too? Will he remember Gat Men cutting off someone's (a looper's - who was Seth) extremities, when he was younger? Would he remember Gat Men chasing some insurgents/loopers who failed to close the loop?

Then, another thought. Why return the Old Loopers to almost the same timeline? Why didn't the Rainmaker transport the Old Loopers back into differing times? Say for instance, one year apart? This would less likely have impact on the Young Loopers closing their loops at such short intervals. Less likely to develop raised brows. You can't connect it easily. Or was there a specific time frame for time travel? Like, 30 years, 2 months, 1 day, and 4 hours, max. But that's just me.

Perhaps I was looking for something more, considering I went to watch with high hopes. People raving about it in Facebook. And my roommate giving her personal approval. This is a personal problem with movies already rated by friends. I find the benchmark of said movies already set high.


I was overtly miffed at how the ending was thought out. I mean, I have better ideas of how to end it. Haha. Ako na! Me and my petulance! I was thinking, Young Joe could've killed his Loop. Then, grow in the farm with the lady and the boy who turned out to be the future Rainmaker (I am an avid fan of John Grisham, so when "Rainmaker" was brought up, I thought of someone who was raking in the big bucks.) Then, he could've guided the young Cid, to use his telekenetic abilities to positive results. I am thinking, the death of his young self really does not solve the problem. Someone else could have killed Sara (the mother). And Cid would still grow up to be an angst-y Rainmaker.


Die hard, Bruce. I want you to exist. :)