Review of LOOPER

LOOPER

Sci-fi, thriller, Bruce Willis, 2012

In 2074, time travel will be invented, but will immediately be declared illegal. However, organized crime will use it to eliminate their enemies. When they want someone dead, they tie the victim up, put a hood over his head, and send him to a pre-specified place in 2044 where a 'LOOPER' shoots him with a blunderbuss and incinerates the body. The perfect crime. Only one problem; thirty years after 2044 becomes 2074, the looper is now in the era of time travel and is a potential witness to the crimes, and so the looper is then tied up, hooded and sent back in time to be shot by his earlier self.

One looper, JOE, played initially by Joseph Gortdon, is disturbed by the visit of his friend, SETH, who tells Joe he had failed to 'close the loop' by letting his future self escape instead of shooting him. Seth hides, but the looper police, so to speak, know Joe has hidden Seth, and bribe Joe with bars of silver (intrusive symbolism even though they don't say how many pieces of silver) to betray Seth. Then Joe finds himself having to kill his own future self--let's call him older Joe--but, like Seth, younger Joe lets older Joe get away. Unlike Seth, younger Joe flees the country, and we see brief glimpses of his life during the next thirty years as he morphs from Joseph Gortdon into Bruce Willis. Henchmen of the RAINMAKER, the wicked dictator of that era, kidnap older Joe. They plan to tie him up and send him back to 2044 to be shot by younger Joe, but, furious because his wife was killed during the kidnapping, older Joe overpowers the kidnappers and returns to the past where he is able to evade death at the hands of his younger self.

Older Joe has learned the addresses of three children, one of whom will grow up to be the tyrannical Rainmaker (short for Reignmaker), and determines to kill them all the children so as to preemptively prevent Rainmaker's despotic rule. ('Would you kill Hitler as a child?' reasoning.) Younger Joe will do almost anything to stop this murder.  Meanwhile, two other loopers, KID BLUE and JESSE, are trying to kill both of the Joe's and thus close the loop.

Lots of people working at cross purposes.

This movie has a lot going on, and it's exciting.  The plot twists draw you in and make you wonder what will happen next. Bruce Willis is good, but not great, his usual ironic nonchalance becoming a little tiresome.

One major flaw, at least for me, was the repeated blatant violations of the grandfather paradox. The story requires these violations, especially at the end, but personally, I want to scream 'that's ridiculous' and slap the script writer in the face.

It did get my pulse up to a run, so I rate it at ++++. People who don't care about paradoxes will probably do even better.

Review of RED

RED

FRANK MOSES (played by Bruce Willis) is a lonely, harmless looking retiree who tears up his monthly checks to have an excuse to talk with SARAH ROSS, a pleasant agent at the pension office.  But Frank is not your typical pensioner. When hit squad attacks his house and tries to kill him, we see that Frank is actually an ex-CIA special ops agent classified as RED - RETIRED, EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. He kills the hit-men and, realizing that his talks with Sarah have put her in danger, finds her and--well--kidnaps her because she thinks he's nuts and fights him off. Luckily, she soon realizes he really is trying to save her life, and the two of them search for old frenemies and other members of Frank's former CIA squad.  These include terminally ill JOE MATHESON (Morgan Freeman) in a nursing home, paranoid MARVIN BOGGS, bored former CIA agent VICTORIA, ex-Russian secret agent IVAN SIMONOV who was once Victoria's lover, and others. These old friends generally greet Frank by asking if he's going to kill them, and then showing him that they have their own guns. It all gets straightened out, and the reconstituted crew goes on the hunt for WILLIAM COOPER, the CIA agent who is trying to kill Frank to prevent revelations of past atrocities in Guatemala in which the Vice President was involved.

Yeah, a little complicated, but all laid out logically enough to be easily followed.

Why the CIA decides now, so many years after the event, to try to silence Frank is a bit vague.

Do not confuse this movie with REDS, Warren Beatty's movie about Bolshevik sympathizers around the first World War. REDS is carefully crafted, intellectually stimulating, and worthless as a workout film.

Frank and the other members of his team are pleasant and often funny. Unfortunately they're killers who not only do not regret taking life, but in some cases, actively relish returning to that activity. In other words, they are psychopaths. None of the reviews I saw mentions this little detail.

As a cinematic production, RED is, well, stupid. But it's exciting, suspenseful and humorous. As a workout movie, it deserves ++++ - it will frequently get your pulse up to a run, and I, for one, plan to see the sequel, RED2.