Time travelling film that never loses the plot.

Rating: 9/10 (29 September 2012)

I'm sure if I'd been paying more attention I would have heard more about Looper before this week but I haven't and I didn't so when I checked out a couple of reviews mid-week it literally was the first I'd heard about Rian Johnson's latest film. With unison all the reviews I read said it was a good film, most saying excellent and one or two saying good but confusing. I normally leave it a week before going to the cinema to watch a new film to give the screens a chance to calm down but with universally strong reviews I made an exception and I'm seriously glad I did.
I'm not going to go into the premise of the film too much, you can get that elsewhere, I just want to highlight how tight and well written the film is and definitely not confusing for anyone that enjoys sci-fi. I liked Johnson's first film of note, Brick (also with Joseph Gordon-Levitt), but to pull off such a feat with a time travelling themed movie, is something Johnson deserves the utmost credit for. Time travelling plots can get confusing fast but Looper works, borrowing from Terminator but still with more than enough for the film to stand on its own merit.
I do get a feel of Nolan about Johnson's work but that's not to take anything away from him at all. People who are at the top of their game are bound to have some similarities between them. The balance between thoughtfulness, depth of character, attention to detail and action is almost perfect and the last film I saw that managed this four way brilliance was in my opinion, The Dark Knight.
Willis is Willis, Gordon-Levitt does an excellent job of being Willis, Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels are also good and a special mention goes to Pierce Gagnon who plays creepy kid so well.
In a year of quite a few highly anticipated, big hitting, action sci-fi movie releases, Looper is the best so far, hands down.