Second-hand action scenes prevent it from being a masterpiece, but Rian Johnson's film is appreciatively clever and packed with intricate details.

Rating: 7/10 (10 January 2013)

The biggest strike counting against "Looper" is that its director, Rian Johnson, is not yet much of an action specialist. And although this new movie has been raved up and appraised for its admittedly clever and intricate ideas involving time travel, the bits and pieces consisting of shootouts, brutal beatings, and a little boy whose temper tantrums result in telepathic explosions are a big part of what Mr. Johnson hopes to accomplish. Now the action scenes are not horrible, but they are not particularly exciting either. Mr. Johnson stages his misc en scene in awkward places, instructs his actors to move too slowly, and the camera is frequently searching for carnage it cannot find—usually because the low-key lighting is too heavy for it to see anything. There is even a scene where a truck gets flipped forward and we just barely see part of the vehicle in a subsequent wide-shot before it disappears off the edge of the screen. Maybe it was staged to come out like that, but I think the filmmakers just got lucky.
So that's the regrettable news: "Looper" is not the masterpiece I hoped it to be. The good news, however, is that its story is appreciatively clever and very detailed. Mr. Johnson, who composed the original screenplay, has devised a setup that Christopher Nolan would probably appreciate. Time travel does not merely exist in his world; it has elaborately detailed limits and restrictions. The story gets off on the right foot with its protagonist (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, an actor I never get tired of seeing) telling us how it all works. Because he exists in the present and the people he's hired to murder and teleported to him from the future, we cannot see the actual time travel process, but he's been informed of how it works and he shares his knowledge with us. Going back to Christopher Nolan, "Looper" reminded me of "Inception" and how in that movie, Leonardo DiCaprio filled in the blanks. This is appropriate, since "Looper" wants to be a little edgier than just a simplistic, corny action exploitation picture.
Save for a completely unneeded flash-forward sequence (in which we see how Mr. Gordon-Leavitt grows up to be a weary-looking Bruce Willis), the movie is subtle and restrained in detailing the future. It stays in the present, and when a man-to-be-murdered is transported into the present, there is no ostentatious, glowing special effects. No bright flashes, no streaks of computer-generated lights. Just a cleverly utilized jump cut accompanied with a subtle whooshing sound effect.
Some people are destined to be angered, and some have, by the portrayal of a child in this picture. In short, the little boy featured in this movie is blessed with a gift. He's like John Connor from James Cameron's "Terminator" movies, except he is destined for bad things instead of saving the world. In regards to the young actor's performance, I was not all that taken with Pierce Gagnon's dialogue delivery, but was utterly stunned by his stunning use of expressions. When this kid puts on a frown, he looks genuinely scary. Even if he did not have mind powers strong enough to detonate a house or rip a man to shreds, you would not want to be caught near him. The only fault to come out of this is that it begins to contradict what Rian Johnson's screenplay would like us to resonate with. Without giving away too much of the plot's third act, the movie tries to make a point that a person's companionship during childhood—the people he or she grows up under—will determine his future. All fine, except this kid is portrayed as so temperament prone and so psychologically unstable that I found it hard to believe that anybody, even a teary-eyed Emily Blunt, could ever reshape his future.
All of the performances are generally good. Mr. Gordon-Leavitt, playing Bruce Willis's younger self, is exceptionally effective. The make-up applied to heighten his resemblance to Mr. Willis is a good starting point, but he also mimics the expressions and idiosyncratic tendencies: the drawl in the voice, the lifting of the eyebrows while maintain a squint, and so on. Mr. Willis is his usual self, and it is nice to see him tackling the role of a morally weaker man afraid not for his life, but somebody else's. Emily Blunt, no stranger to praise from me, is also strong in her role.
Had "Looper" made some tweaks to its third act and Mr. Johnson had recruited some expertise to assist him in coordinating the action scenes, it probably would have reached the heights of excellence it has strived for. But as it is, it is a perfectly fine movie worth seeing and I did enjoy it more on the second viewing. Rian Johnson does have a lot of imagination and cleverness and to complain that his nice, perfectly good movie is not a masterpiece—considering this is still very early in his career—does seem a little silly.