Movie Reviews: "Looper"

[JamesG]

Movie Reviews: Looper


Critics are scrambling aboard the time machine that is Looper and are seemingly enjoying the ride.

With few exceptions, that are praising the plot, the dialog, the direction, editing, and the performances of Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the same character at different ages.





Manohla Dargis focuses on the director in her New York Times review:

“Slamming genre cheap thrills together with high-art aspirations, [director Rian] Johnson spins a fast-moving entertainment out of a setup that could have been cooked up by the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick.”





Roger Ebert has much praise for Johnson’s screenplay:

“Most time travel movies run into trouble in the final scenes, when impossibilities pile up one upon another. This film leads to a startling conclusion that wipes out the story’s paradoxes so neatly it’s as if it never happened.

You have to grin at the ingenuity of Johnson’s screenplay.”





Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes:

“Gordon-Levitt is flinty, and Willis, on his A-game, is fiery. Together, they take us on a helluva trip.”





And Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal concludes that the movie is a combination of:

“pounding action, elegant style, steady-state suspense, marvelous acting and, despite that droll pooh-poohing every now and then, haunting explorations of youth, age and personal destiny.

It’s a lot to claim for a sci-fi thriller, but I was blown away by Rian Johnson’s Looper.”

-IMDB News