Bored to Tears

Rating: 2/10 (19 October 2012)

If I was bored to tears why is this getting two stars, I hear you ask? There are two simple explanations really: the acting of Emily Blunt, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, all of whom were typically good and believable as their characters; and making Joseph Gordon-Levitt look not only ill half the time but plausible as Bruce Willis's younger self - they did more than simply give Joseph contacts to wear (his eyes are typically a dark brown).
The movie starts off slow, with the hint of a promise of improving. Unfortunately it doesn't. The peaks of interest in Looper are small, too few and far between. First of all the tag line: 'Time travel hasn't been invented yet, but thirty years from now, it will have been' is badly worded and used too much for comfort.
There is too little happening for too long. All we do is see Joe kill a few too many in a corn field. Boring.
The story continues on slowly. One of the interesting points was the time travel, actually, when they chop up young Seth so they can lure in the old one. It was rather horrible to watch pieces of Old Seth vanish before his eyes until his legs literally fell off. It was rather accurate. If your younger self doesn't possess something, then you don't either. The paradox comes in that you don't have prosthetics for you lost limbs: you wouldn't. You're in the same time as your younger self which creates a paradox.
Then there's the pathetic yelling and fighting between both Joes.
By this point I was playing a game on my phone.
And the story edges onwards slowly, to the point where nobody cares anymore. Neither old Joe or young Joe are particularly likable which is probably the point. Old Joe changed but not that much - he's still the childish selfish man he was when he was young, just toned down. And young Joe is entirely jealous, selfish, childish, doesn't know how to be responsible and has like... no emotions. His only redeeming point comes at the end of this long journey.
It turns out Sid is a demonchild 'rainmaker' whose presence in the story appears to be the only justification for the time travel. Why rainmaker appeared in the first place is never explained, only with the thin explanation that maybe the rainmaker became a big bad man because something happened to his mother. Joe's sacrifice at the end was touching.
The various themes of fighting for survival, and how far are you willing to go to survive, as well as what will you do to exact your vengeance, various moral issues etc. However none of them worked.