Movie Title: Looper
Director: Rian Johnson
Date Released: September 28th, 2012
Date Seen: September 30th, 2012
Seen with: Michael, best friend
Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review
A fantastic film that keeps you guessing the whole way through. Rian Johnson did an amazing job on this film. Visually it was stunning. The transformation of Joseph Gordon-Levitt to look more like Bruce Willis was great. You could definitely see them as being the same person. JGL did a great job, in mannerisms and manner of speaking that Bruce Willis has. I thought that was extremely well done. Some of the close up shots, if you were thinking about what JGL really looks like, you started to nit-pick at how silly somethings looked (the nose bothered me from the side), but if you didn’t do that it looked great and natural.
The time travel aspect was extremely well done. In all time travel movies you have to accept some type of paradox being created no matter what. It’s going to happen. This one only had one major blunder I found, but it wasn’t that overwhelmingly bad. Go see it, or if you want to know what it was, it’s at the bottom of my part 2 review. This time travel was not a kind of alternate universe time travel (where you can have multiple people, that appear to all be doing the same thing but they are separate people). The actions of one might affect another, but they still are different people (no memory transfer, necessarily. Take for example the movie “Timecrimes”. It’s a Spanish thriller, I recommend it. In that movie, there ends up being a “Hector 1” “Hector 2” and “Hector 3”. If Hector 1 does something different than Hector 3 did, it doesn’t alter Hector 3 in anyway. This movie is different. In Looper, it’s the (what I think of as more likely realistic time travel) is that if something happens to the “young” version, it will directly affect the “old” version. So if the Old version gets sent back to the present time, and then the young version, say, gets shot, old version will immediately have a scar there. Also, if the young version does something differently (like, gets a dog instead of a cat), then the old version will now remember getting a dog. It’s pretty cool. Especially the scar thing… I really really like that part of this movie.
So yes, it’s a great movie, there’s a major plot point that I never got out of the trailers that I LOVED. It took this move from like an 85% to a 90% for me. I realize others might not like it, but I did. It was great. Do yourself a favor and go see this immediately before someone ruins it for you!
Part 2 – In-Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis
The movie opens with Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) standing in front of a tarp in the middle of a field. He checks his pocket watch, adjusts his gun, and a man appears before him on the tarp – bound and hooded. Joe shoots him. It was an abrupt beginning just to get you ready and over these killings quickly. From here we start to learn about the “Loopers”. Sometime in the future, time travel is invented and immediately outlawed. It is used in secret by major criminal organizations who want people “gone”. In the future, due to body tagging and other new technologies it’s almost impossible to get rid of a body. So, they send their targets back in time, to the Loopers, who kill them and dispose of their body in the present. Joe always seems to have the same routine. He gets up, gets his “time” that tells him when he has to be there to eliminate his target, does the job, and goes and has a coffee and a meal at a local cafe. He has the same waitress every day, a nice young girl named Beatrix, who teases him about how his “French is coming along”. We see him occasionally listening to French tapes or checking the French-English dictionary for random words in French. He then goes and cashes in his silver bars – every time a body is sent to you, they have some silver bars on their back for payment. There we see some other Loopers, who ask Joe if he’s going to the club tonight. Joe goes home, rests for a bit, and heads out in his beautiful sports car (hell if I know what kind it was, I’m horrible with cars. It was red, you’re lucky I remember that much). His car is a stark contrast against the people on the street. There are a number of just random stranded cars in the area he drives by, people living on the streets, and we even see the kind of street justice going on – a man steals a bag from another man…. so the guy shoots him in the back with a shotgun. No one really reacts. But it was just like a minute scene, just to show you the difference between the life Joe has and the life on the streets (which we later find out is where he came from).
On his way to the club, Joe drives by his friend Seth (Paul Dano). He is another Looper and appears to be Joe’s best friend. Seth just purchased a hover-motorbike, but can’t get it to start. He’s all upset, but rides with Joe to the club. On the way, Joe gives Seth crap about his “TK trick” of levitating a quarter in his hand. Joe (in a narration voice, like he did earlier with the Loopers) explains that a few years ago the “Telekinesis/TK virus” was discovered. At first people were really excited, thinking this meant they might have superheros and stuff, but all they could really do was move small objects in their hand. Seth thinks girls finds it hot, and Joe thinks it’s stupid so they just kind of best friend joke about it. At the club, Seth and Joe are let into a special back door. This building appears to be connected to wherever the boss of the Loopers is – because everyone knows the Loopers. Even the strippers – and Joe seems to be infatuated with one of them, Suzie (Piper Perabo). She tells Joe that she’s already booked for the night and she’s sorry. She does seem genuinely sorry, not just like an “oh, not this guy again” sorry. Around that time Seth comes and gets Joe and they join the other Loopers watching a scene unfold at the bottom of the stairs. Another Looper has just “closed the loop”. This is what it is called when Loopers are sent their own self to kill. All Loopers accept the job knowing that this will eventually happen. This is because the crime organizations don’t want the ex-Loopers to reveal anything about this operation in the future. So, they send back the old version of the Looper, same as always, hooded and bound, and when the present Looper goes to get his silver – he will find a large sum of gold. He will then be given a handshake goodbye and left to live out the next 30 years with his tons of money he should have. Narrating-Joe makes a joke about how the job doesn’t attract the most long-term thinkers. Ha. The boys decide to celebrate so they into the bathroom, “drop” (take an eyedropper full of drugs, by dropping the liquid drug into their eyes) and have a good night of partying.
The next few scenes are cut together quickly – we see Joe’s daily routine of wake up, drop, kill target, eat at dinner, party. Repeat. But it seems that every couple of nights a different loop is getting closed – IE all of a sudden all the Loopers are being sent themselves. Strange. Nothing happens to Joe or Seth yet though, so they keep on dropping, partying, and making some dough. One night, Joe wakes up to frantic knocks. He goes to the door – but no one is there. He hears the knocks again and discovers it’s Seth at the window. He is clearly distraught and freaking out. Joe asks him what happened, but he already knows. Seth says that he was at his job, waiting for the target. The target appeared, but was singing through the gag. Even though the words were messed up, he could still understand the song – the same song his mother used to sing to him when he was a little boy. Seth wanted to know what he looked like, now realizing that he was sent the older version of himself. So Young Seth removed Old Seth’s hood. He talks to Old Seth who explains that all the loops are being closed due to a new reign in the future, someone called “Rainman”. Old Seth also asked for a cigarette… so Young Seth untied Old Seth’s hands….. then Old Seth just started running. Young Seth said he knew he only had 15 paces (apparently that is the range of the “Blunderbuss”, the gun they use), to shoot Old Seth – but he couldn’t. Young Seth needs to hide so he ran to his only real friend, Joe for help. He begs Joe to help him and Joe says he can’t – he will give Seth some money but that’s all. Seth begs and pleads with Joe – and then there is a knock on the door. Joe looks and it is Kid Blue and some other croonies sent to look for Seth. Joe finally decides to hide Seth in a secret vault in the floor under a rug. Kid Blue comes in and Joe asks what it’s all about. Kid Blue says that “Abe” wants to see him, and the others are going to stay at the apartment and look for Seth. Joe says ok, telling the guys where coffee is and leaves. At the club, which is basically the front to the actual behind the scenes crime-boss type situation, we learn that Kid Blue is a young guy who thinks he is better than the Loopers. One, because he does dirty work for “Abe” himself, and two, because he gets a real gun, that takes real skill to use and can be shot from far away (a Gatlan, I think). The Loopers only get the Blunderbuss, with its stupid 15 foot range, where there’s now way to mess up. Joe makes a joke about how Blue needs to be careful not to blow his other foot off, Blue gets pissed, and then Abe shows up, and makes the exact same joke. Ha. Abe (Jeff Daniels) we learn is from the future. He was sent back to oversee the Looper operation. In his spare time, he also has become basically “The Godfather” of the city. He is very personable and nice to Joe. He wants to know where Seth is, obviously. Joe says that he doesn’t know. Abe says well then he’ll just talk for a while so Joe can think about it. Abe says he knew when we first saw Joe that he’d be an awesome Looper. He got Joe off the streets – after Joe was caught trying to steal something from a watch shop, which was actually a front for some other business. He likes Joe. He said he made Joe what he is. Just like he made Seth what he is. And he wants Seth back. Abe explains he knows that Joe has been saving half of all his silver, planning on going to France. Abe tells him he should go to China instead. Because he’s from the future, trust him, go to China. That was pretty funny. Anyway, Abe says that Joe can either give them Seth – or give them all of his saved up silver. Joe thinks about it… and asks if they’re going to kill Seth. Abe explains that killing young Joe would have too many unforeseen consequences/alter the future in ways they don’t know. But they need young Seth to find old Seth. Eventually Joe agrees and tells them the code to the vault under the rug. As Joe leaves, Abe nods to someone, and then tells Joe to hang out at the club for a couple of hours, on the house. Joe does – and goes and hangs out with Suzie. We don’t see them do anything, and it appears that Joe cares more about the cuddling/company part of her than anything. She “drops” him, while he tells her that he thinks he just got his best friend killed. Then he says that he is going to bring her half of his stash, so that she can raise her kid right. She explains that she doesn’t need his money, and she likes her job. He earned his money so it is his and he should use it.
We don’t immediately see what happens to Young Seth. We do, however, see Old Seth running towards a train yard. There is a fence in his way and he starts to scale it. Almost all the way up, he wraps his hand with cloth to get over the barbed wire easier. Then he notices something strange on his wrist. It is an arrow that points down his arm. He moves the sleeve back and sees a scar that says “Be at 75 Wire St. in 15 mins”. He stares at it for a minute and then notices that one by one, his fingers are gone. They simply just disappear. You start to realize that they are cutting up Young Seth – which is resulting in the already healed over wounds on Old Seth. Old Seth starts to drive to the location, but as he goes he starts losing important parts – right as he gets on Wire St. he looses one of his feet and crashes. He hobbles as far as he can before both of his legs are gone. As he arrives at the door of the address, now his arms are mostly gone. The door opens, and Blue shoots Old Seth. Young Seth is seen on an operating table, being kept alive but obviously now permanently ruined. I’d think that this would have some serious future implications, but apparently they’re still not as bad as straight up killing the poor kid. Joe goes home, opens the vault, and finds Seth gone, but all his silver there. One silver bar is out of place so Joe pushes it back into place – and pulls his hand up – with some blood on it. So a nice little literal “his blood is on your hands” thing.
Joe is still apparently in full swing in killing – but then it’s his turn. He is waiting at the site, like always, checks his watch, and gets his gun ready. He waits. Nothing happens. He checks his watch again, and looks slightly worried, and still has his gun ready. Then, the target appears. It is Old Joe (Bruce Willis). He does not have a hood on nor is bound. Young Joe recognizes him as himself…. hesitates… which gives Old Joe time to turn around, causing Young Joe to shoot Old Joe in the back, releasing the gold bricks, which Old Joe grabs and throws at Young Joe… he then runs up, punches Young Joe, knocking him out. When Young Joe wakes up, it is now dark. He finds a note in his pocket that says “RUN! RUN FAR AWAY – TAKE A TRAIN”. So what does Young Joe do? Run back to his apartment, of course. He does at least destroy his cell phone. He goes up to his apartment and finds it ransacked and some of the silver sitting out of the open vault. He starts looking around and then hears voices – Blue and a couple of other men carrying the silver down to the car. Young Joe hides – and watches as the men take another load of the silver while Blue pulls more out of the vault. Outside, we hear a gun shot. Blue looks up, and at the same time Young Joe sneaks up on Blue and knocks him into the vault. He screams that he is going to find Old Joe and kill him. One of the men run back upstairs and starts shooting at Young Joe. Young Joe runs to the balcony and starts climbing down the ladder – but one rung of the ladder is slippery with his own blood (he got his ear clipped by a bullet) and so he falls of the ladder.
Then we flash back to Young Joe checking his watch….. It appears that above was just some strange dejavu, or him thinking about what would happen in the situation he let his loop get away. This time, the target appears, bound, hooded, and he kills him. Joe does find out that this was in fact himself. He removes the hood and sees a dead Old Joe. He gets his gold. And he goes on to live the next 30 years of his life. We see random snippets – he does go to China. He spends the first few years living in the lap of luxury, then when he starts running low on money he takes up some small crime jobs and moves up the ladder to bigger ones. We see him change, looking older and older, and eventually we are given Bruce Willis version of Joe. We see him meet a Chinese woman in a bar (Qing Xu) and eventually marry her. They are clearly in love. Crazy love. One morning, now at the 30 year mark, we see some men come in and take Old Joe away. They also burn his house. We don’t see at this point what happened to the wife. They take Old Joe to a warehouse and start getting him ready to send back in time. He manages to get his hands free at one point and it allows him to overcome the men. Now he has a choice to make. He looks at his hand, and we see a weird number written on it. He then looks at his pocket watch, which now has a picture of his wife in it. He thinks for a moment – and then steps into the time machine, unbound and unhooded of his own accord.
We see Old Joe arrive – and the same scene unfold that he had “imagined” or whatever in his young days. But this time we see it from a far away camera shot, which makes it kind of comical. We also now are witnessing what Old Joe does. We see him leave the note for young Joe, and go off. But, he can kind of “see” what young Joe is doing it, after it happens. For example, when Young Joe smashes the cell phone, Old Joe now has it as a memory, so he realizes what Young Joe must be doing. He follows young Joe to the apartment, and while young Joe is inside we see him take out one of the croonies downstairs (hence the gunshot Blue and young Joe heard). When Young Joe falls, Old Joe drags him off to safety, outside the city. He once again tells Young Joe that he should run – and then he leaves.
There’s a mad hunt in the city now for both young and old versions of Joe. Abe says ever second that passes is super bad. And since Abe pretty much “owns” the city, even the cops are looking for both of them. Blue is sent home by Abe, for being a dumbass. Blue said he just wanted Abe to be proud of him and that he can find them. Young Joe we see go straight back to the city…. why? He’s an idiot. Old Joe is seen breaking into some facility, getting on the computer, and typing in that number he has written on his hand. It prints out a map and he circles three locations on the map. Then Old Joe looks down at his wrist – and sees an arrow pointing down his arm. It says “MEET AT TRIX”. The next morning, Young Joe is seen at his normal diner. Old Joe calmly walks in the door. Young Joe explains he wasn’t sure whether or not Old Joe would remember “her” referring to Beatrix, the waitress. Old Joe makes a hilarious comment about how there is another girl that works there, on the weekends, Jen….. which is less letters (pointing at Young Joe’s obviously in pain cut up arm). In this scene there’s a lot of back and forth between the two, some of it is silly, such as the French lessons, the fact that they order the exact same thing, and other is more serious. Young Joe asks about time travel and Old Joe dismisses him saying that if they got on that they’d be at the diner forever making drawings out of straws. Old Joe does explain though that the weirdest thing is now his brain is like a fried egg. It’s all fuzzy and he can’t explain what is going on inside his head. Like the seeing things that young Joe does after he does it, gives him the memory of having done it. Old Joe also explains that he has to do a mission…. he asks if Young Joe has heard about the Rainmaker. Old Joe says that not many people know much about him, even if it is a him. They just have heard rumors, that he saw his mom shot, was upset, and has some personal vendetta against all vagrants, loopers, and people “less” than him. Old Joe says it’s like a massacre in the future. He knows that the Rainmaker is one of these three kids (some guy in the future figured that part out) and so he’s going to kill them. He has a personal score to settle with the Rainmaker – the people who were sent to kidnap/kill Old Joe – also shot his wife. And apparently the wife is the most amazing person ever and saved him from himself. So he wants to just get rid of this kid once and for all. Young Joe says that if Old Joe just shows him the picture of her, then he’ll avoid her when he sees her and then she’ll never get killed. Old Joe refuses. About that time, Old Joe notices that the diner has gone silent – and the waitress is gone. Blue and some of his men barge in. Old Joe tries to help young Joe, but Young Joe is still determined to kill Old Joe so he joins the gun fight. He does manage to rip one corner off of Old Joe’s map though. Old Joe escapes into the corn fields behind the diner, and then Blue turns on Young Joe, trying to catch him. Young Joe escapes on Seth’s old hover motorbike (which is how Blue tracked him), into the corn fields, and jumps off of it. Young Joe decides to head to the location on the part of the map he got – knowing that eventually Old Joe will show up there. Old Joe goes to start to find those other kids.
Blue, again, gets major shit from Abe. Abe tells him that tracking Seth’s bike was smart, but not calling for back up was idiotic. So Blue is officially off the case and told to go home – for good this time – and Abe takes Blue’s gun away. Aw sad day. We now randomly see Blue once in a while sulking, and listening to the police radios – and later he’ll turn up again. So now we flash between two stories at once. I’m going to tell you Old Joe’s story – and Young Joe’s story. Just know that they flash back and forth. When they catch back up, I’ll tell you.
YOUNG JOE
Young Joe goes to the location on the map. It is the home of Sara (Emily Blunt) and her son, Cid (Pierce Gagnon), who is about 10 years old. During the day Sara sees some movement in the corn field around her farm – she takes her gun outside and threatens the “vagrant” saying that she’s shot many a random vagrant and she’s not afraid to do it again. She goes back inside, feeds Cid dinner, and then goes and puts him to bed. They have a strained relationship it seems. That night, Sara is out on the porch and hears a noise from the corn field. She gets her shotgun and heads towards the noise. She turns off the barn light, and then a figure starts approaching her. She backs up but it doesn’t stop. The shadow keeps coming towards her, until she falls backwards. Joe jumps out between her and the figure with his blunderbuss, and then the figure is revealed – a special looking man with a sign around his neck. I didn’t read it but he was some crazy vagrant. He goes away quickly, now scared, and Joe falls to the ground and starts throwing up violently. She drags him to the porch and starts slapping him to get him conscious. She recognizes the signs of withdrawal and asks him when the last time he dropped was. He says over a day and he asks for water. She goes in the house and we see Cid’s feet come down the stairs, and hand Joe a bright purple water bottle. Joe sucks on it like a little baby. Sara comes back and rushes Cid away and back upstairs. He asks about the man, saying that he was nice and helped her (Sara) so they should be nice to him. Sara tells Cid to go to bed, and Cid says “Night Sara”. She looks hurt that he calls her Sara but kisses him and goes back downstairs to find Joe passed out. In the morning, Joe wakes up and is handcuffed to a cot in the barn. Cid is standing at the door, waves at him, then runs back in the house. Sara gets up and asks Cid what he wants for breakfast and Cid tells her that the man is awake. Sara goes outside to talk to Joe. She says that if he rests the morning, he should be able to be able to gtfo, and by the end of the week his withdrawal symptoms should be gone. He explains that he can’t leave. She recognizes the gun, and asks him if he is a Looper. So she knows what they are. He explains *some* of the situation, that he let his loop escape and he knows his loop will be coming to this farm. He shows her the map and then Sara freaks out when she sees the number (that was written on Old Joe’s hand) and asks who the hell he is and how he got this number. Uh oh. Young Joe explains more, about Old Joe (but not mentioning that he is actually Old Joe – still just refers to him as a target) wanting to kill the kids he thinks might be the rainmaker. Sara is worried and says that Joe can stay on a couple of conditions. He can’t talk to Cid and has to stay outside. She hopes that he’ll protect Cid. Young Joe says he doesn’t really care about the kid – more about killing his loop. But still, she lets him stay. We mostly see for the next couple of days Young Joe just hanging out, and occasionally and interaction between young Joe and Sara. Cid, at one point, sneaks downstairs in the middle of the night to talk to Joe. He shows him a toy that he’s messed with, a set of frogs that you can squeeze and they light up. He’s managed to alter them so that when you squeeze one, the other lights up. Cid explains that this way Sara and Joe have a way to communicate in case something happens. Smart kid. Joe asks about Sara, as in, why Cid calls her Sara. Cid explains that “she isn’t really [his] mom.” He says that Sara is a liar, and that she thinks he doesn’t remember his real mom – but he does. The next morning, Joe goes and talks to Sara. She knows the second that he pulls out the frogs that it was Cid’s work. Joe said Cid came to him and that he’s sorry. He asks Sara about what Cid said. She explains that she really is Cid’s mom, but he doesn’t remember. She had Cid when she was 22, a party-person, and a drug addict. She left Cid with her sister in the country so she could keep on having fun in the city. Then one day, there was an accident. And she’s been here ever since trying to make up for all those years she wasn’t there. So Cid thinks the sister is his mom because he remembers her more than Sara, and that’s what hurts Sara most. Aw sad. Later that day, a strange incident happens. Sara is upstairs with Cid, and he starts getting back-talky to her. She scolds him, he gets mad, and then starts to scream at her about how she’s a liar and he hates her, etc. etc. The kid is screaming bloody murder hate at her. She is terrified, we’re not sure why, and runs and hides in the SAFE in her room. Yes, a big huge person-sized safe. That’s strange… huh. Joe hears this going on from outside. After Cid has calmed down, Sara comes back out and hugs him and he says he’s sorry and falls asleep crying in her lap.
Then we hear a knock at the door. Sara goes downstairs and her frog piece is seen on the table lighting up light crazy. So Joe is obviously trying to warn her of something. She opens the door to a polite man, who identifies himself as Jesse (Garret Dillahunt). He has important business and is really tired and asks for some water. Sara doesn’t want to let him in but insists. She says her husband will be home from the city soon so it’ll have to be quick. Joe has let himself in the back door, hears them coming to the kitchen and goes and hides in the living room as they walk around to the kitchen. Jesse explains that he is on a manhunt for two dangerous criminals, and shows her pictures of Old Joe and Young Joe. She says she hasn’t seen them. Jesse asks about the toys everywhere and she said she has a son too, also in the city, with her husband. They go into the living room and we see Young Joe hiding behind a couch. Not a great spot. Jesse starts putting Sara’s information into a little computer, saying he has to send it to his boss for checking. Sara isn’t really listening because she notices Cid coming down the stairs. She moves in such a way that Jesse can’t see him. She then directs him to the kitchen again. Cid goes through a door in the living room and Joe quickly follows. The door leads to some underground tunnels his grandfather built. They prop open the door a tiny bit to watch the exit, for when Jesse leaves. Cid and Joe then have a little heart to heart. Joe explains about his past, because Cid asked. Joe was born to a vagrant woman, who sold him to a gang because she didn’t want him. He got away, lived on the streets for a while, and then Abe found him and his life changed. He says that Cid is lucky to have Sara. We see Jesse leave in his truck, and then Cid and Joe head back up the house. Sara hugs Cid and is super thankful Jesse didn’t find either of them. That night, Sara is laying in bed, and you can tell she’s having a debate with herself. She looks at her little frog toy… and pushes it. We hear mad footsteps running into the house and Joe comes in asking what is wrong – and Sara jumps his bones. I WANT THAT MAGICAL FROG! Seriously, push a button and Joseph Gordon-Levitt comes running to your room and has sex with you? Yes please. So yes, they sleep together. After sex, they talk about things like how Cid is a great kid and stuff. We also discover that Sara is TK. She is playing with a lighter, pretty well in fact. She said she always thought it was hilarious when guys would hit on her with the stupid TK trick, when she could do it better. One guy even popped a blood vessel in his eye “trying to get it up.” Ha. Sara also asks Young Joe about his “target” he failed to kill. She saw the picture and knows that it is Old Joe, rather than just some random person. The next morning, Joe wakes up and Sara is not in bed. He walks down the stairs… and finds Jesse holding a gun to Sara’s head. He checked out her story (about the husband, probably) and suspected something was up so he came back. Joe says that Old Joe is coming here, so they should just wait and they can take him out – Young Joe will even give Jesse all his gold if he lets this happen. Jesse says no way, he has to take Young Joe in. Jesse lets Sara sit down (Joe tells her not to do anything stupid, because he’s the best shot in the world), and Joe starts to walk more towards Jesse. Then Sara notices Cid coming down the stairs. She motions for him to go back upstairs, but Jesse hears him, turns his gun, points it at the kid, and then realizing he is pointing his gun at a child, drops the gun (or raises his hands, or something to indicate a oh shit). Cid, however, got scared and trips down the stairs. We see the following events unfold in slow-motion. Joe starts to run to the stairs to try to catch Cid. Sara gets up and starts running that way too. Things in the room start to float… first just small items, like magazines, cups, etc, then it gets worse…. Joe is about to catch Cid, but Sara reaches Joe first and body tackles him and pushes him out the door. When Cid hits the ground everything in the room – including Jesse is floating up in the air… Cid is extremely angry and upset, obviously, and obviously has the TK gene…. and he MAKES JESSE EXPLODE. Like, blood just starts gushing out of his body. Outside, Joe realizes… oh shit, Cid must be the child who grows up to be the rainmaker. He asks Sara if she knew. He asks her how her sister died. She said it just happens when he gets scared – and one day, he was climbing a bookshelf and it fell on him and he couldn’t control it, and that’s what happened to her sister. Young Joe now turns and says that he has to kill him. Sara says that with her, raised right, Cid will have a chance… cue nature vs nurture explanation, but Joe still is going to kill him. Sara screams for Cid to run into the cornfield and he does. Joe chases after him and Sara is running screaming for Cid to avoid Joe. Joe finds Cid, crying, covered in blood and horrified at what he has done. Joe can’t kill him. He can’t bring himself to do it and just hugs Cid. Sara finds them and hugs Cid – and Joe tells him that now Old Joe is going to come (since he will now have this as a memory) as well as some of Abe’s people as well (since Jesse won’t report back in). Young Joe says he’ll go try to stall anyone that is coming, and Cid and Sara need to get in Jesse’s truck and gtfo.
OLD JOE
Old Joe’s story is a little more boring, but important. He goes to the first location on his map. We see him hide out behind the house until a young boy comes home. We see Old Joe walk out…. and hear a gunshot. So we know Old Joe is going to do this mission. He does though go off and cry, not believing that he actually did it. But he is still determined – because he wants to try to save his wife in some sort of weird way. He thinks if the rainmaker never existed, then his wife never would have been shot, and perhaps he never would have been eliminated as a Looper. But more importantly, if wife would have been ok. We see him go to the second location on the map, and observe it for a while. He sees a car pull up, and his face looks horrified – his favorite stripper, Suzie gets out of the car. She walks up to the apartment next to where he is watching – and picks up her young daughter – and then goes into the apartment he is watching. So Suzie’s daughter is one of the possibilities. He observes from the window, but can’t bring himself to do it yet so goes to think about things. While he thinks about things, such as “when was the first time you saw her face” (referring to his wife), he is having a harder and harder time remembering her. But he does manage to remember her. This seems to bring back his anger so he thinks he can do it again. He heads back to her apartment, barges in, says sorry, goes to the daughters bedroom, kicks the door open, and Blue is there, with a taser and shoots him with it. Blue had been listening to all the police airwaves, and heard about some possible sightings of Old Joe – and he also knew that Joe has always had a special interest in Suzie – so he’d been watching Suzie’s apartment on a whim. Once he saw him on the video tape watching through her window, he had been there ready in case he came back. So Blue now goes and takes the captured Old Joe to Abe’s hideout. Abe is already in the process of getting people ready to head to Sara’s farm after not hearing anything from Jesse. When he sees Blue on the video camera he is shocked. Blue brings in Old Joe and everyone is amazed. One guy starts to make sure Old Joe doesn’t have any weapons on him – and then Old Joe pulls out all the awesome kick ass moves, and kicks everyone’s ass. He pulls a gun off the guy searching him, shoots Blue in the shoulder, shoots the guy searching him, and then manages to get a hold of a couple of machine guns and mows everyone down. He fights his way up to Abe’s office, who has now barricaded himself in a back room. We see Old Joe look at the map, so he knows where the farm is and sees that they were all prepping to go there, and then he starts breaking down the door that Abe and 2 of his men are in. The next scene we see Blue wake up – (he was just knocked out and shot in the shoulder) and find everyone dead. Including Abe, shot straight through the head. So Blue, now upset and even more angry heads off to the farm as well.
BACK TO EVERYONE’S STORY. Ie we’re all caught up and to the same point in time.
Young Joe is walking along the road, as Old Joe pulls up in a van. He explains that he KNOWS Cid is the Rainmaker and he’s going to kill him. He tells Young Joe that he should take all this gold (in the truck) and go away and enjoy his life. Young Joe refuses and says that there’s no way he’ll let him kill Cid. He says that if Cid grows up correctly, he’ll be fine. Old Joe don’t give a fuck. About that time, Blue pulls up on a hover motorbike. Both Joe’s shoot at him, but it ends up being a quick fight between Young Joe and Blue. Young Joe wins. But during that time, Old Joe managed to get away. We see Cid and Sara finish loading up the car and start heading down the road. Old Joe comes into view and is pointing a gun at the car. Cid screams for her to stop because he’ll shoot them, and Sara says “no, just stay down sweetie…” and plans to ram him. Cid keeps screaming for her to stop…. and she keeps going faster…. and then Cid makes the car stop, causing it to flip. They are both ok, but slightly cut up. He says he’s sorry he was just scared and Sara says it was ok and that now they have to run to the corn field. There’s a big empty field between them and the corn field, so they start running. At one point, when they are almost to the fields, Old Joe shoots towards Cid, and manages to graze his face with the bullet. Now we have angry-Cid. He starts his normal freak out and this time it’s bigger than usual. The loose hay on the field gets lifted up, some of the dirt, both Sara and Old Joe, and he makes this like seismic wave happen – that manages to flip over the car that Young Joe was now driving to find them in. So Young Joe is now hurt, but on the edge of the field watching this unfold (afraid to step in, knowing what might happen). Cid keeps getting angrier and angrier, staring at Old Joe, but then he hears a soft voice telling him “it’s ok sweetie, calm down, you’ll be alright” and his vision slowly shifts over to Sara – and it’s here that he remembers her voice from childhood and that she really is in fact his mom. He gets calmed down then and not so gently makes them both fall back to the ground. He hugs her calling her Mom, and she kisses him and still tells him to run to the fields. Now Old Joe is getting closer and closer and Young Joe starts to hobble onto the field. He only has his bludnerbuss though and we know that only has a 15 foot range. Old Joe has a pistol or something. Sara puts herself in the way of the bullet, and Cid stops and turns to watch the events unfold. We hear Young Joe narrate and the color change to a kind of sepia tone. Young Joe explains that in that instant, he saw a series of events unfold. A child witness his mother get shot, run away, and grow up an angry child with a hatred toward loopers – thus the creation of the Rainmaker. So Young Joe sees the circle starting again, and decides to fix it. The color changes to normal, and we see Young Joe turn his Blunderbuss on himself and shoot. Old Joe immediately disappears.
We see Sara take Cid and put him to bed. She asks about (Young) Joe, and she says that he had to go away for a while. Then we see her go out to the field and look at his body one last time.
So here’s the one (major) time-travel blunder I found. Young Joe says he could “see” the circle repeating itself. However, if this incident was the reason that caused the Rainmaker/Cid’s hatred of loopers/made him evil/whatever, we have a major problem. We saw the Old-Joe version LIVE HIS ENTIRE LIFE. And this whole sequence never happened. So in Old Joe’s life cycle, the rain maker was created, even though this event didn’t occur. So there is still the major possibility of there being a rainmaker. Ooops. We were also never explained that weird dejavu kind of thing was… but ah well…. I guess I’ll let it slide since I liked the rest of the time travel premise.
Overall: 8/10
I loved it. Other than the one major-time-travel blunder I found, it was still an amazing movie. It kept me guessing, threw me for a “loop” (oh haha, I’m hilarious), and made me excited the whole way through. I loved it.
Maria's Movie Reviews 