The movie is a time-travelling movie about a futuristic America where time travel hasn't been discovered yet, but will be in thirty years. In that future future, the mob uses time travel to send back people they want to assassinate because it is much harder to dispose of the bodies in the future future. So they hire 'loopers' which are people in the (past) future who show up at a certain time/place and shoot the people they send back and dispose of their bodies in the (past) future. Make sense? Of course it does. Well, if the loopers are still alive 30 years later, the mob finds them and sends them back for the loopers to kill themselves (unknowingly because they show up with a hood on). That's called 'closing the loop' and they get a big payout and get to live their next thirty years as they see fit. Okay, still with me? JGL's character's future future self, played by Bruce Willis, comes back and tries to escape 'closing his loop'. Emily Blunt, Piper Perabo, Paul Dano, and Jeff Daniels also star in the movie.
Contrary to my synopsis, the movie is actually pretty easy to follow. It is in keeping with the Dr. Who time travel motto: Don't worry about it. This is true, the plot isn't about time travel; it's about life decisions. Obviously, when you have time travel in a movie, you can go on a million tangents trying to find loopholes, or you can focus on the characters and their choices and motivations, which are the main focus in this movie. While the movie started out a little slow, I enjoyed the characters and plot line of the movie. I was not aware that there would be some children in harm's way in this movie (which is usually a no-go for me) but it was done respectfully enough for me to continue watching.
One of the biggest visual pieces of this movie was the prosthetic work done to JGL to make him look more like Bruce Willis, which worked. He looked like Bruce visually and in his mannerisms. It took about 3 hours for him to go through makeup each day. While it was very realistic looking, i'm not convinced it was necessary. Perhaps if one of them had been a lesser-known actor, it would make sense to change their appearance to match, but this is Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis. You still saw these two actors despite the makeup. It really wouldn't have been that much of a stretch to believe they're the same person, it's been done a million times before. Since JGL is really really good-looking, I was a little disappointed we didn't get to see his dapper self the whole time. Ok, I've vented. The score was pretty awesome in the movie. Almost awesome enough to buy from iTunes. I also very much appreciated the minimal use of CGI in the movie. The practical locations and sets gave it almost a comic book feeling. It was quite beautiful cinematically.
JGL and Bruce Willis did a good job acting as the same person, well it was more JGL acting like Bruce but it was still cool. I also enjoyed Emily Blunt's performance in the movie. She was somehow vulnerable while being a bad-ass at the same time. The best performance in the movie no doubt was from the five year old phenomenon called Pierce Cagnon. Wow. Some adult actors couldn't pull off his range in this movie. I can barely get my five year old to pick up her toys let alone cry/scream/sneer on cue.I've heard mediocre reviews from some people about the movie. I'll admit that the beginning was a tad slow, but once it got into it, it picked up pretty well. It's really not hard to follow, if you're paying attention. I'd never recommend mult-tasking anyway during a film, but especially in this one. In the end, it was pretty unique and cool. It was definitely different than what I was expecting. "I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams out of straws and stuff".
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