Netflix Movie Reviews: 'Looper' (2012)

"Looper," a 2012 sci-fi thriller directed by Rian Johnson ("Brick"), starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt, is currently available to rent on Netflix.

You may remember seeing previews for "Looper" last year, in which there appears to be a face-off between Gordon-Levitt's character, an assassin, and his future self (played by Willis). It appeared to be both a clever twist on the idea of time travel and also an intense action thriller. After seeing the film, I can tell you that the trailers were somewhat misleading.

While it could have been a clever twist on time travel, the storyline of "Looper" is more convoluted than clever. And while there is action in the film, it ends up feeling uninspired, and the showdowns between Gordon-Levitt and Willis' character never feel as intense as they should. All of this is mainly due to the fact that a lot of stuff doesn't make sense in this film.

"Looper" simply tries to be too many things at once and stretches itself too thin. It's trying to be a sci-fi thriller, a futuristic drama, and a time-travel mystery all at the same time, and writer/ director Rian Johnson should have just chose one storyline and stuck with it.

In the year 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works as a "Looper," a special kind of assassin working for a mob boss known as "The Rainmaker." The Rainmaker is living 30 years in the future, and sends people back to Joe's time to be killed and disposed of because there is no way to hide bodies in the future (due to "enhanced tracking methods").

All of this becomes a little messy for Joe when his future self (Bruce Willis) is sent back to the past for him to kill. His future self escapes with Joe in pursuit, but eventually the two Joe's sit down to talk things out. This is when future Joe explains that the Rainmaker has gone off his hinges, and has ordered that all of the Loopers be killed. Future Joe's idea is to find the Rainmaker in present Joe's time, and kill him so that he can't grow up to fulfill all of the evil he will accomplish.

So it's around this time that the film kind of diverges into a separate storyline in which present Joe ends up hiding out on a farm that is owned by a woman named Sara (Emily Blunt). You may remember that Emily Blunt was not heavily featured in the trailers for "Looper," but her character is actually a big chunk of the story.

I gave "Looper" 3 stars, rather than 2, because I actually really liked the part of the film that dealt with Sara and her young son Cid (Pierce Gagnon). Blunt does an amazing job and so does Gagnon. I felt their storyline was the most intriguing part of the script. Sara and Cid both possess telekinetic abilites, but Cid's are much more powerful, and there's something not quite right with him.

Bottom line, "Looper" is a pretty convoluted story with a lot of plot holes. But it's still worth seeing if you're willing to turn off your brain a little bit (and look past the terrible prosthetics on Gordon-Levitt's face), and enjoy the storyline that emerges with present Joe, Sara, and Cid.

"Looper" rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Looper (2012) {R} Directed by Rian Johnson Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Pierce Gagnon, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels

To view "Looper," you can head over to Netflix here.