'Time travel is messy' – as is this poor excuse for a movie

Rating: 1/10 (8 March 2016)

Another 'universally acclaimed' dud. Contrary to what critics claimed, Looper is neither intelligently written, nor competently executed, and the blame falls entirely on Rian Johnson, being both the writer and the director of this mess.
The movie doesn't have a clear focus, shifting halfway from being about the hero having to kill his own future self to being a mild Omen-type horror featuring a little boy with frightening telekinetic abilities. The pacing is slow and uneven, the cinematography (offering plenty of particularly badly executed, saturated blue lens flare effects) is ugly, and the poor establishing of time-frame, environment and characters, paired with the sloppy editing, makes certain scene changes hard to follow. Even the casting choices are odd. (Frankly, I don't see any similarities between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis. I feel sorry for the former as he had to wear prosthetics to make him resemble Willis more, yet the result is utterly unconvincing.) The film wastes precious time trying to round out Kid Blue's totally pointless character, while glossing over Old Joe's much more important wife, Suzie or Abe. In fact, what we do get to know about Abe is conveyed through the laziest filmmaking device possible, Joe's hurried voice-over monologue.
Why Rian Johnson was given the opportunity to write and direct Star Wars Episode VIII is a mystery to me. His style is completely different, and in Looper he failed to come up with a coherent script. The only thing he proved is he can't even handle an action sequence involving only three characters (see the poorly edited final confrontation between Kid Blue and Joe 1&2 – where did the Kid disappear?). The answer must lie in the lazy approach of the material. 'Time travel is messy', says Old Joe, as if that solves the problem of the incoherent plot. Just like 'That's not how the Force works!' in the dismally bad The Force Awakens. OK, I do understand. Lazy writing, odd casting, poor characterisation and world-building, choppy editing, lens flares – check, check, check. Johnson might be a 'worthy' successor to Abrams.