Looper

Looper

Rating 4 out of 10

I like using the www.rottentomatoes.com website with movies.  If you are not familiar with it (doubtful but you never know) the site collects reviews from hundreds of certified reviewers.  They then give the movie a red tomato rating (60% or better positive reviews) or a rotten tomato rating.  I am always leery of any movie that gets above an 80% rating.  Movie reviewers are a goofy lot.  For some reason they tend to be very artistic.  When you look at many movie reviewers year end top ten lists you see they are usually out of touch with the American public.  When you get more than eight of ten reviewers agreeing on something there is probably something wrong with it.  --- END of Royces RANT.

The idea of this movie seemed a little off to me but had lots of actors I really like.  Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  The movie even has a friend of mine on my tennis team Frank Brennan in a small part!

The movie starts in the year 2044.  Good to know thirty years in the future we are not only driving old trucks but have flying motorcycles too!  The world is a rough place.  You are either very rich driving fancy cars (or flying cycles!) or living homeless on the street.  Thirty years further in the future it's harder for the mob to kill their enemies because of tagging of the bodies.  They have gained control of the only time machine around and they use it to send people they want to kill back in time thirty years.  Waiting there is their hit man (a Looper) who kills him and disposes of the body.  Joe (Levitt) is a Looper living the high life of wild women and drugs to help him cope with what he does for a living.

Every so often for a reason not given or I didn't pick up a Loop is closed.  The head bad guy in the future sends that Looper back in time to be killed by his younger self.  Time travel movies are always full of crazy things like this.  After a Looper kills his older self he retires and knows how he will end thirty years in the future.

Problems begin when Joe's future self shows up and overpowers current Joe.  He is determined to find the future bad guy in 2044 and kill him thus keeping all this bad things from ever happening.  Kinda like the logic used by the Terminator in coming back in time for Sarah Conner.  The current bad guy (Daniels) sends all the bad guys out to kill current and future Joe.

It's not as confusing as I may be making it sound, but for me not real entertaining either.  With this cast I expected better.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt (does he really need three names) is a good actor and maybe our next Batman?  Here they put a bunch of makeup on him trying to make him look like a younger Bruce Willis.  Instead he looks more like the old Max Headroom.  

The movie is less than two hours run time, but seemed much longer.  Wasn't crazy about the ending.  For the life of me I can't see what all those reviewers LOVED on this movie.