JustSaiyan.com is really moving up in the world, scoring advance press passes to the new Bruce Willis/Joseph Gordon-Levitt flick, Looper. In fact, it’s almost a rule that we won’t review a movie that doesn’t have Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it. So after seeing a few trailers for Looper, it made us believe that we were going to be seeing an epic team-up of Bruce Willis + ANYBODY taking on ANYTHING. That turned out to be far from the truth. Be warned, the following review contains massive spoilers, if only because the ad campaign.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Joe. No, I’m not making that up.
So the best way I can describe this movie is The Terminator meets Akira. The advertisements describe a world where the mafia controls time travel, and in the present day (and by present day, I mean 2044 or something like that) a level of mafia hit men known as Loopers kill people sent back in time, because apparently 30 years later in 2074 it’s too hard to get away with murder and winning the lottery consecutive times is boring I guess. That much of the previews is accurate. So is Bruce Willis being sent back in time to be murdered by his past self, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Of course, good old Joe doesn’t succeed in killing himself and then shenanigans ensue as Bruce Willis runs around the past and starts murdering children. No, that is really what happens.
Relax, I don’t want to hurt you. Just your child who may or may not become the next mob boss. I’m not really sure.
So Bruce Willis starts going around murdering children who he thinks might grow up to be the mob boss who murders his wife in the future (the very future he was sent away from to be murdered, because murder is too hard in the future). Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn’t particularly bothered by the whole kiddie murder thing, and just wants to kill Bruce Willis (his future self) to look good for the mob. To that end, Joe just hangs out on a farm with one kid who may or may not be the next mafioso for the entire movie as Bruce Willis murders a bunch of innocent children. That’s pretty much most of the movie.
Oh there is this one other thing. You see, at the beginning of the movie, it’s mentioned that telekinesis is a thing, but mostly a bar trick used to levitate quarters to impress dumb chicks. That’s all you’re really told about it until two-thirds of the way through the movie when the kid Joe is watching manifests telekinetic powers on a scale that starts approaching Akira-like status. Then this kid goes berserk with it…
So yeah, without giving away more plot points and the ending, The Terminator meets Akira is pretty much a good way to describe the plot. I really can’t say if this is a good movie or not. What I can say is this is not the movie that the advertising led me to expect. If you asked me whether it’s watchable or not, it is but I wouldn’t pay a lot to see it. Maybe wait for a Netflix or Redbox release for this one.
Later, BroZ.
other JGL movies that were epic were manic and brick 2 good movies
Quick trivia: Brick was directed by Rian Johnson, director of Looper.
This isn’t really a review, it’s a summary. You just summarized more or less the entire movie, and didn’t even attempt to review it.
To quote you: “I really can’t say if this is a good movie or not” …Right. Well unfortunately, that is the intended function of a review. Perhaps you should change the title from “movie review” to “movie summary”.
You are correct. I could’ve stated it a bit more elegantly, but in my mind the point I was making with the “review” was that I felt like the advertising was selling a totally different kind of movie than what I ended up seeing. To that point, the expectations I was given going in were distracting to what the movie ended up being.