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Looper (Film Review)
This is one of those films where the trailer leads you to expect something quite different to the actual film, and I mean that in a good way. What I thought after watching the trailer: young Joe and old Joe would after early fighting team up to bring down the organisation after them, Bruce Willis would do his quipping action hero stick, and there would be the macho male bonding equivalent of a hug before young Joe, now wiser, continues his life and old Joe goes back to the future.
This is so not what happens.
Which is to the film's great advantage. It does some genuinenly interesting and unpredictable things with its time travel/free will versus fixed fate premise. Not to say it's perfect: for half of this film, the gender fail is enormous as the future is divided into dead Madonnas and living whores, while violent crime is exclusively a male occupation. Then we get Emily Blunt who is neither and basically becomes the main character instead of the two Joes, so there is that. Oh, and don't try to think through the logistics of how the time travel works: as in most stories with time travel, this only gets you a headache.
However, something worth keeping in mind is the very basic question as to which model of time travel we're dealing with - time travel stories usually can be divided into those who assume there is only one timeline, which means that if you change the past, the original time line is erased and it's not possible to go back there or save anything from it (Farscape has a third season episode like that), and the multiverse model where different timelines co exist, the original one and the ones created by each change (this, for example, is what Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles uses, and also the Star Trek reboot film). Looper is basically model A with some borrowings from model B - we see a flashback (flash forward?) to the thirty years that transform young Joe (Joseph Gordon-Lewitt) into old Joe (Bruce Willis), and because of the events of the film, none of these things will ever happen, nor will old Joe ever exist, yet evidently old Joe exists for the course of the film and young Joe would not make the decisions he does if not for the older self who comes back. As I said: time travel is a headache.
Speakilng of young Mr. Inception and My Name Is Robin, he plays a younger version of Bruce Willis very plausible, but maybe the biggest surprise is this: contrary to what the trailer led me to expect, the Willis version isn't there to teach his younger self how not to be a youthful idiot, or anything like that. He makes that claim, sure. But as it turns out, younger Joe is actually the more moral and braver man. Old Joe claims he was "saved" by his wife (that would be the dead Madonnna) from his screwed up junkie assassin life and has no choice but to, in the past, kill the future Evil Crimelord of Evil, the "Rainmaker", who will in the future be responsible for Joe's wife's death as a fallout from the attempt to capture Joe. When young Joe not unreasonably makes the suggestion to be shown a picture of the woman so he can avoid her, never marrying her, thus avoiding the situation which gets her killed, old Joe immediately declines; he doesn't just want to save her life, he wants to have her. And in order to have her, he's willing to kill three children, one of whom will be the Rainmaker. Yes, the other time travel trope this film toys with is the "would you kill Hitler?" question. (Sans Hitler.) The question as to whether people can change is as important as whether you can change events that once happened: old Joe may consider himself "saved", but as it turns out, he's simply become an even more efficient and ruthless killer than he already was.
Joe (any version of him) started out as an abandoned child who gets picked up by a crimelord and taught to kill when he's far too young to know better, and the vicious circle of victims becoming victimizers is a key theme of the film. However, it doesn't draw the nihilistic conclusion that this is inevitable. Half way through young Joe meets Sara (Emily Blunt) and her son Cid, who have a confusing, volatile relationship of her own (that we get to witness in scenes without Joe present, which is how Sara becomes a character in her own right and as I said basically the main one of the second half), and yes, young Cid (who is a really well played child character, neither saccharinely sweet nor a spawn of evil pod person) is the future Evil Crimelord of Evil. But he isn't yet. He's a child. And Sara is fully aware of his potential.
The solution young Joe finds to break the vicious circle occured to me, but only five seconds or so before he actually does it. I never would have guessed it at the start of the film. Which ends on a cautiously optimistic note; there is no guarantee that what Joe does really will make all the difference and that Cid won't become the Rainmaker, but he now can have a very different life, and so can Sara. The future isn't fixed anymore for them; I wandered out of the cinema both relieved and impressed.
Standout horror-of-time-travel sequence: when one of young Joe's assassin colleagues lets his older self go, gets captured himself (thanks to Joe, which is important later), and we see the older man being forced to give himself up to be killed - by first scars appearing, then fingers dissappearing, then his nose tip, then yet another limb, as his younger self gets being amputated bit by bit. (Which we don't see - we "just" see the older man changing.) Not only is this gruesome without being bloody but efficiently demonstrates why the Joes go on the run later on.
Standout says it all by implication sequence: Sara's first argument with her son, which ends with her locking herself up in a safe. Once you find out the backstory you know why, but it's also a perfect image for what their relationship is at this point.
Neat world building detail: Abe, the crimelord, who made young Joe what he becomes, who organizes the "loopers" and himself was sent back from the future in order to set the whole thing up wears a different fashion style from what the other characters do. His clothes look vaguely Chinese (though he himself is Caucasian, which fits with the other heavy hints the film gives that in the future, China is THE floroushing superpower while the US is a crime ridden wasteland. (And something unmentionable happened to France, it seems.)
All in all: eminently watchable. I didn't love it - it felt too claustrophobic for that to me - but I certainly, as mentioned, came out impressed.
no subject
I appreciated that very much, especially how carefully the script aligns her with the kinds of women that Joe might have known in the city ("And they saw how I was living and they took him . . . I had been at a party in the city when I got the call. I wearing this ridiculous party dress, all my ridiculous shit") and thereby in hindsight defuses some of the madonna/whoring because it's so clearly Joe, even future Joe, not the film.
Speaking of Emily Blunt and time loops, have you ever seen Edge of Tomorrow (2014)? I've never written much about it, but I really love it; it is actually one of my favorite stories in its subgenre.
But as it turns out, younger Joe is actually the more moral and braver man.
Not all along, though, which I really liked. He makes the expedient decision with Seth and the results are horrific. His original motivations for stopping his future self are sheer self-interest. He grows into his ethics and it isn't as simple as redemption by romance: he doesn't want to see Sara die any more than older Joe wanted to lose his wife (and in fact he will save her with almost the exact solution he proposes to older Joe in the conversation you cite, taking self-sacrificial action that avoids the fatal situation entirely), but he starts to see the cycles of violence he's always lived within, personified most obviously by the future shadow of Cid but most importantly by older Joe. This is who he grew up into once. Does he want to do it again?
I can't tell if it makes a difference that older Joe is technically the continuation of a younger Joe who closed his loop. I don't think it's a moral indicator, because our younger Joe certainly tries his damnedest to fulfill his final commission, but it is the point of divergence.
Yes, the other time travel trope this film toys with is the "would you kill Hitler?" question. (Sans Hitler.)
I really admire how much of Looper is built directly out of tropes that should have been played to death, but it turns out that when you combine them and treat them as all real, they still work, and some of them even work for maybe the first time.
Not only is this gruesome without being bloody but efficiently demonstrates why the Joes go on the run later on.
It also establishes that the effects from younger to older self are instant and retroactive, which sets up the memory link between the two Joes and means the ending will work.
I didn't love it - it felt too claustrophobic for that to me - but I certainly, as mentioned, came out impressed.
I didn't love it, either, and I had hoped to; I thought Brick was wonderful and I'm really fond of The Brothers Bloom. But it's beautifully constructed and it isn't stupid and it is violent but compassionate, which is a rarer combination than it should be. Its ending isn't a cop-out.
no subject
Re: Edge of Tomorrow, no, haven’t seen it.
Re: younger Joe growing into his ethics, not starting out as better - oh, absolutely. I mean, you can see him as the younger version of older Joe, and without that point of divergence, becoming him - but I still loved how the script flipped both expectations and (older) Joe’s image of himself, the idea that his wife saved him and he’s therefore a better, redeemed man. To quote a cliché, our actions define us, and it seemed to me making a point about being ethical as an ongoing process, not something you’ve become once you abstain from violence.
If he hadn’t been hunted down, I entirely believe that older Joe would have lived out his life with his wife without harming anyone. BUT his refusal to even consider the first alternative younger Joe suggests - changing the timeline so he never meets his wife - in favour of killing several children, one of whom has a future as an evil overlord - as well as his actually going through with the killing of said children emphasize there’s a quintessential selfishness in him that younger Joe, with a warning example in front of him, is able to overcome in the end.
(Sidenote: I might be misremembering, it’s been a few years, but as far as I recall older Joe doesn’t argue “if I never meet my future wife but don’t kill the future rain maker, she might live but many other innocents will suffer”. )
I also love how this deconstructs the “saved by the love of a good woman” cliché. Younger Joe isn’t saved by the love of or for Sara, either, but because, as you say, he starts to see the pattern, and is eventually willing to take the self sacrificial action to break it. Meaning: instead making the point that a violent man can turn good through finding true love (and thereafter is good), the story Looper tells is of a violent man at different points in his life who is able to stop the cycle by breaking the cycle of violence through self sacrifice.
Incidentally, it now occurs to me that The last Jedi both has a “would you kill a future evil overlord as a child?” Situation, and a “caring for a good woman does not equal redemption if you’re not willing to work for same yourself” situation...
no subject
It was done a great disservice by its trailer (which I did see) and its generic sci-fi action title, because both of them made it sound like an aliens-vs.-machismo shoot-'em-up as opposed to an existential comedy with a playfully exacting approach to time loops and Tom Cruise playing so deliberately against type that it's one of my few reasons to feel kindly toward him. His character has the heroic teeth and the confident handshake of a typical Tom Cruise hotshot, but he backs them up with all the moral and physical competence of a soufflé someone just slammed the oven door on, and the arc of the film is not only whether he'll be instrumental in the salvation of the human race (probably) but whether he'll mensch up along the way (not guaranteed). It trusts its audience more than any time-travel film I've seen that wasn't Primer (2004) and Primer wasn't really trust so much as a dare; it made you work to put the pieces together, but Edge of Tomorrow simply expects that you'll do it just as fast as the characters and plunges into the third-order consequences without a word of infodump. It stand up to rewatch on more than the plot-checking level. And it made me start to notice Emily Blunt. Because it runs (peculiarly—I don't know if they were a feature of the original manga or introduced in American adaptation) with a random assortment of World War II echoes, it might be out of your range of things to watch right now, but at some future date I really recommend it.
it seemed to me making a point about being ethical as an ongoing process, not something you’ve become once you abstain from violence.
I agree and I find it a point worth stressing, especially since so much Hollywood redemption runs on a peculiarly Christian model where morality is a toggle switch and last-minute atonement is better than commitment to change. Older Joe is clearly operating in that mindset, as if meeting his wife made him the good guy and even if he's hunting and killing people again now, he's doing it for reasons of love and that makes it all right. (I'm simplifying a little—he's racked with horror to realize that killing the first child changed nothing—but then he pulls himself together to track down the second.) Younger Joe gets that it's decision to decision, not black-and-white. He doesn't kill himself because he's irredeemable and deserves to die. He kills himself because as much as he'd rather live, it is the only thing that will break the cycle. Older Joe didn't actually want to break the cycle. He just wanted to make it work in his favor: shoot this person and it's wrong, shoot that person and it's okay. [edit: That looks fine to the audience when he's shooting Abe and the gatmen, but much queasier when it's kids.] Younger Joe shoots the only person whose life he has a right to.
(Sidenote: I might be misremembering, it’s been a few years, but as far as I recall older Joe doesn’t argue “if I never meet my future wife but don’t kill the future rain maker, she might live but many other innocents will suffer”.)
They never have that conversation. I think by the end younger Joe is thinking about it, but I don't know that it ever crosses older Joe's mind.
[edit] For this reason, I think it's important that older Joe's wife is someone younger Joe has never met and never will: she's a complete abstract. She's as unknown to him as the two other children whose lives he saves by breaking the Rainmaker loop. He doesn't have to know them to decide not to accept them as collateral damage.
a violent man can turn good through finding true love (and thereafter is good)
Exactly. Being good is something you do, not something you are.
Incidentally, it now occurs to me that The last Jedi both has a “would you kill a future evil overlord as a child?” Situation, and a “caring for a good woman does not equal redemption if you’re not willing to work for same yourself” situation...
There are worse recurring concerns to revisit! Especially the latter.