REVIEW: Looper

Looper (2012): Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels and Paul Dano. Rated R (The future is not a happy place.) Running time: 118 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

The premise of Looper is the kind of big sci-fi concept that’s so good it carries the whole film. The dense, knotty plot will appeal to puzzle-solvers who loved Inception and may well frustrate many others but the movie’s success rests heavily on the degree to which you accept the following:

The year is 2044. Thirty years in the future (that is, in 2074) time travel is possible but has been outlawed. Ingeniously, the mob uses it to carry out hits, sending victims back in time with a bag over their head. They arrive in the past on their knees in a field, a warehouse, or somewhere similarly out of the way, and are killed on the spot by “loopers,” for-hire assassins wielding high-powered shotguns.

Loopers are paid well enough – for reasons never totally clear to me, they are paid in slabs of solid silver – but have pretty bleak contracts with their mob boss, Abe (Jeff Daniels). Termination of a looper’s contract means termination of his life. He receives a handsome payout and enjoys the next thirty years until a bag is thrown over his head and is transported back in time to be killed by his younger self. Most loopers accept this as a grim fact of their trade.

Word through the temporal grapevine, however, is that a new mob kingpin in the future is ending the looper program. He’s closing all the loops, so to speak, sending every looper into the past to their death whether they’ve asked for an end to their contract or not.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt underneath some very convincing makeup and prosthetics that provide continuity between the present and future) is a looper. He enjoys the cavalier lifestyle associated with his work; he takes narcotics through eye drops, goes to the club with his best pal (Paul Dano) and has the standard Oedipal relationship with a prostitute (Piper Perabo) that all brooding men in movies have. Imagine his surprise when one day, on the job, his future self appears in the form of Bruce Willis – on his knees to be killed but without a bag to hide his identity – and books it.

What does Present Joe do? If he doesn’t hunt down and kill Future Joe, he’ll have to answer to Abe in the present day. If he can kill Future Joe, he’ll at least be able to enjoy the next few decades, moral and metaphysical trauma notwithstanding.

If all this sounds complicated, you’re right – it is. But Looper has a reassuringly flippant attitude toward its mythology. During one confrontation between the two Joes at a diner, a highlight of the film, the Bruce Willis iteration dismisses a logistical question about the rules of time travel. They could sit there all day drawing charts and diagrams, he says, but he doesn’t care about that. What matters is the here and now, subjective though those concepts may be.

There is more to the film than I’ve mentioned but describing it all would be difficult, not to mention spoil some surprises. For a while the movie seems as though it will play out like a sci-fi variation on The Fugitive, with Present and Future Joe playing hunter and hunted, respectively. But a mid-film development invites meditation on the age-old time travel question: Is it ethical to punish someone for a crime they’ve yet to commit if it means preventing future tragedy? The film’s center of gravity during this latter half shifts from Joe to a remarkably precocious kid (Pierce Gagnon) and his tenacious mother (Emily Blunt).

Personally, I prefer the movie’s setup to its payoff but don’t let that discourage you from seeing it. Writer/director Rian Johnson’s noir-tinged style (carried over partially from his debut, the highly stylized and incredibly fun nostalgia binge Brick) makes Looper addicting entertainment. The script has wit and rhythm; the dialogue during the diner scene crackles like water in a pan of hot oil. Joe has the charismatic appeal of the classic Bogart antiheroes. (In a dry voiceover, he reveals that ten percent of the population in 2044 has a telekinetic mutation. “Assholes levitating quarters in bars to pick up girls,” he explains.)

Looper makes a genuine effort to be Great Science Fiction, which is kind of thrilling to watch even if it falls a bit short. The last act feels less sure of itself than what precedes it (a barrage of bullets fired by Bruce Willis late in the film seems to be from another movie entirely) but a great idea is still a great idea. With any luck, Rian Johnson has a few more in store for us.

- Steve Avigliano, 10/9/12

REVIEW: The Five-Year Engagement

The Five-Year Engagement (2012): Dir. Nicholas Stoller. Written by: Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller. Starring: Jason Segal, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie. Rated R (Non-graphic sex and some cursing). Running time: 124 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Today’s young people have difficulty settling down, or at least the two young people in The Five-Year Engagement do. Tom (Jason Segal) and Violet (Emily Blunt) are madly in love with each other, so why the delay? Why not just tie the knot already? The popular notion seems to be that their generation wants everything to be just right. They want to make sure their mate is really The One, and if so, they want the absolute best for their special, unique love.

Older generations, such as the parents and grandparents of Tom and Violet, can’t understand this. They got hitched young, made the best of it and were happy enough. Where’s the romance in waiting? But there is romance in Tom and Violet’s relationship. Their song, for example, is Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” about as close as there is to a definitive romantic soundtrack.

Tom is a typical Jason Segal character – kind, sensitive, a little oafish – and Violet is his admiring British companion, a real sweetheart who seeks a career in academia. They still flirt, joke and have good sex but life keeps getting in the way of their actual wedding. There is always some reason or another to extend their engagement and postpone the ceremony.

The first of these postponements results from an irresistible career opportunity for Violet. She has been accepted to a two-year research program for psychology but the job is in Michigan, quite a ways away from their home in San Francisco. No worries, says Tom. They can put off the wedding for a couple of years and get married when they come back to the Bay Area.

But this means Tom has to set aside his culinary career – he is a sous-chef for a swanky restaurant – and settle for making fat sandwiches for college students in Michigan. He doesn’t mind though, really, he swears. He’s willing to compromise for the love of his life. Of course, as the reality of two years settles in, Tom becomes less and less patient.

Meanwhile, Tom’s future best man (a wonderfully doofy Chris Pratt) and Violet’s sister (Alison Brie) hook up and before they know it, they’re on the married-with-children fast track. They offer Tom and Violet a constant reminder of the still-engaged couple’s lack of progress down the same path.

The Five-Year Engagement has a nice heart but is a bit long and overstuffed with side characters, which is to say it is a standard Judd Apatow-produced film. In addition to the in-laws there are friends, co-workers, bosses and acquaintances, all played by talented comedic actors and Apatow regulars. The movie has funny moments but the best of these have an off-the-cuff, ad-libbed feel, a testament to the strength of its likable cast. The more screwball shtick – including an incident with a crossbow and another involving the lewd use of deli meats – is less successful and mostly passes by without leaving much of an impression.

But jokes are only part of a romantic-comedy and the majority of The Five-Year Engagement focuses on the ups and downs of Tom and Violet’s relationship. Unfortunately, the script, written by Jason Segal and director Nicholas Stoller, who previously collaborated on the very funny Forgetting Sarah Marshall and last year’s charming revamp of The Muppets, never digs deeper than sitcom-level insights. Tom and Violet have a lot of long, serious talks about the state of their relationship and plodding through these scenes with Mr. Segal and Mrs. Blunt sometimes gives the viewer the uncanny feeling of actually being a part of one of these insufferable conversations.

As it turns out, Tom and Violet learn that their love is not necessarily as special or unique as they may have once thought. Many people have gotten married before them and many more will get married after them. The Five-Year Engagement effectively illustrates this revelation by not being an especially unique or memorable romantic-comedy. There are awkward wedding reception toasts, infidelities, break-ups and make-ups, some Apple product placement and a few fine uses of Van Morrison’s music. Assuming you follow the movie’s moral about settling for the less-than-spectacular, you should be happy enough with this movie.

- Steve Avigliano, 4/29/12