Badly Conceived.

Rating: 5/10 (30 September 2012)

Looper was enjoyable enough but I really can't understand all the praise. Maybe I expected too much of this film, but I was looking forward to a slick piece of speculative sci-fi that was thought- provoking, realistic and fairly deep. Instead, I got a lazily strung together generic action movie with a splash of time travel and super- powers.
"I don't want to talk time travel sh*t" or something along those lines is commonly used in this film to breeze past any plot holes and presumably stop the narrative become too complex. This irked me as it was one of the main draws in my opinion.
I was very frustrated by the little amount of effort that was put in to creating a futuristic society. Forget the realistic near-future depicted spectacularly in films such as Children of Men. This world is more akin to the recent Dredd 3D film. Shallow and lacking in realism. Personally, I would love to have had more information on the state of government etc as the mobs seemed to be running everything but there really isn't any explanation given to this at all.
The dynamics of time travel in this film are completely unbelievable. The notion that you can chop someone leg or whatever off and their "future self" will lose it is completely absurd. You're clearly creating a brand new entity when you come back in time. Put it this way. If I created a copy of myself from 0.1 seconds ago next to me. Are we going to be magically linked? Probably not. It also presupposes some sort of multi-verse scenario, in which case, Bruce Willis's character shouldn't even exist in that eventuality. I don't want to rant about this too much but I thought of all the ways they could depict time travel. This was one of the worst.
And then there are the superpowers. Come on. Everyone has pretty much agreed biological evolution is basically over for us and it's all about technical augmentation now. The idea that in 33 years we'll be developing telekinesis is laughable to the point where the fact you're meant to accept this is almost offensive.
On top of this, the whole plot in general is very hard to swallow and lacks in verisimilitude. Again, I find myself being forced to accept these absurd scenarios such as the fact that the mob can't dispose of bodies, but can set up secret time machines?? Or that they have to send them 30 years back in time and not just 2 billion years or whatever.
And then there's the 30 year montage. Oh dear lord. I turned to my girlfriend and said. "Man, don't you just hate it when you get old and suddenly you're Bruce Willis". There was actually laughter in the cinema when Levitt morphs into Willis.
All in all, I really wouldn't agree with the reviews saying its clever etc. In my opinion the plot is extremely lazy and is secondary to the action. Which is fine. If you want to watch an action film. One of the main reason's I've even written this view is to counterbalance these reviews raving about this very mediocre film calling it a "masterpiece". I read reviews touting it's cleverness or how it goes to extra lengths to not leave plot holes and I think: am I even watching the same movie here?
Personally, I found myself rather disappointed.