4 stars
a time travel movie can only make so much sense …
but in the end Looper manages to weave some humanity into the story …
an argument can definitely be made that way too much is going on in the movie making it a mess …
but IMO the ending makes up for it …
the other knock against “Looper” is that if you’re a fan of sci-fi genre you will definitely be recognizing influences of some earlier films, but as i mentioned before while Looper is derivative and absurd in some ways it succeeds in others …
for me the whole sci-fi time-travel action angle of the movie was secondary to the drama angle of it …
in that sense Looper is a bit like “Source Code” ( 2011 ) and “The Jacket” ( 2005 ) but while those two are good movies with weak endings Looper is a weak movie with a strong ending, and i prefer the latter. because in the end we have to answer - WTF was the point of all that running and shooting ?
in fact off the top of my head just one better ending comes to mind but i won’t reveal which one at this time …
watch “Looper” first, then i will tell you what my all time favorite ending is, though some of you may be able to guess …
Sexuality in “Looper” is there, but fairly tame. Violence on the other hand is quite prominent - bordering on gore, but not quite going there. But what really makes the movie dark is the psychological aspect of it.
to me “Melancholia” ( 2011 ) was Lars Von Trier’s darkest movie and “Breaking The Waves” ( 1996 ) his least dark … i would put “Looper” at around the same darkness level as “Breaking The Waves” so it’s in the LVT spectrum of darkness but on the lighter side of that spectrum …
overall i would put Looper in the top 1,000 movies of all time or so, which means it’s just about good enough to be worth a watch if you watch one movie per week on average …