Theater Whore: Looper

I’ve been hearing people talk about this new movie Looper starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis and no one has said it was bad. I have heard that it was good to awesome so I decided to check it out. I learned that I really need to stop listening to people. More. This movie is about who will be referred to as Old Joe (Willis) and Young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) Simmons. It takes place around 2042 where Young Joe is a killer for the mob 30 years in the future. He shows up with his gun, a blunderbuss, victim appears in the middle of a field with silver plates as payment, and he shoots them. He then takes their body and burns it. 

You may be asking why go through all this trouble of dealing with a corpse. Well, in the future murdering people is illegal and so is time travel but mobsters don’t give a damn and use it. What confused me about these “Gat Men” as they are called, is that they just wander around with their fucking cannons without being arrested. Loopers have a 30 year contract meaning that after that amount of time their old self is sent back to be killed. They know and accept this. Usually. Young Joe’s telekinetic friend, I’ll get to that nonsense later, Seth played by Paul Dano has his older version sent back and cant kill him. Seth’s older version shows up and sings a song that Young Seth remembers his mother singing to him.

Paul Dano: When Shia LeBeouf is busy.

Old Seth tells him about a Rainmaker in the future. Old Seth gets away since their blunderbuss guns cant shoot well past fifteen feet. Young Seth runs to Young Joe’s house to hide. Young Joe sells him out and by the time Old Seth gets to a meeting place he falls the fuck apart. Whatever they do to the younger version of you effects the older you. First Old Seth’s arm has a scar that tells him where to go. Then his fingers start to vanish. Then his nose. Then his legs come off and his arms. Then he is shot as we see Young Seth being cut on a table. This was the best part of the movie.

Its like looking in a mirror. But nothing like it at all really.

Young Joe shows up for his next job to kill someone and it turns out to be his old self. Old Joe blocks the shot his the gold strapped to his back and knocks Young Joe out and leaves a note telling him to run away. Young Joe heads home and his place has been tossed. He finds Kid Blue played by Noah Segan and locks him in his safe hole and tells him to tell their boss Abe played by Jeff Daniels that he is going to take care of everything.

Fourth time's the charm!

Young Joe scars his arm and leaves a note that appears on Old Joe’s arm telling him where to meet. Old Joe explains what happened during the last 30 years. He moved to China, started doing killings for some group, spent all his money, continued to get high off this stuff in an eye dropper, met a hot Chinese chick, she got him clean, and they lived happily ever after. That is until the 30 years was up and some Gat Men showed up and killed her and brought him in to be killed. We have now come full circle.

Like an asshole.

Old Joe freed himself before being sent back and came back to find this Rainmaker and kill him thus preventing this bad shit in the future. Old Joe tells Young Joe where to go and find where the Rainmaker may be who is a kid at this point and kill him. Old Joe finds two little kids and shoots them dead.

Because that would make her proud.

Young Joe finds a lady on a farm named Sara played by Emily Blunt who has a son named Cid. He tells her that he is there to stop a man. After a bunch of uninteresting nonsense he tells her the truth. She bones him and he later finds out that the kid is her sisters. Oh, and she’s telekinetic as well. Let me explain this shit. People started developing this power and almost all of them just float quarters to look cool. That’s all. The little boy Cid has the ability to do some crazy shit with his powers but she doesn’t tell Young Joe this. Old Joe is captured and kills everyone at his old job before heading to kill the kid because apparently shooting kids is like eating potato chips or masturbating.

'Bout to be Bone City up in this bitch!

Some dude shows up and looks for Young Joe and the little kid falls down the stairs. Young Joe tries to catch him but Sara stops him and pulls him out of the house before the kid loses his shit and literally pulls the man apart. Like…he pulls him apart with the power of his mind! Its not pretty and Young Joe is like “Holy shit! This kid is the Rainmaker! He needs to die right now!” But he cant do it because the kid looks like this.

Aww...now kill it with flames!

Kid Blue shows up and gets killed and then Old Joe shows up and shoots Sara which makes the kid lose his fucking mind and start making everything float off the ground. But this doesn’t really happen and Sara calms him down and Young Joe kills himself saving the future. I think. That kid had anger issues and I’m sure he will find another way to do some evil shit later on. Wait. What the hell is going on?

"That's where I left my remote..."

Why did Young Joe have a change of heart? He knew the kid was bad and had the chance to kill him but didn’t and didn’t have the skill to kill his older self so suicide was the only way to fix this? Huh?! This movie had a couple of cool parts but the rest was a huge sack on letdown. Gordon-Levitt looked weird and creepy playing a young Bruce Willis. The stripper love interest that you’ll notice I didn’t mention until now was pointless. Why give people with an important job like killing such shitty guns?

Keanu...?

This movie should have been about the interesting 30 years in between. I liked that stuff. That telekinetic shit was like a whole ‘nother movie tossed in here to wrap it all up nicely. The tagline for this should have been “This fall you'll say ‘What the fuck?!’”