3:00 snapshot #1176
Saturday afternoon movie in bed. "Looper."
[movie spoilers]
I enjoyed the movie, but like many sci-fi action movies, it doesn't hold up to post-viewing scrutiny. That's fine--action movies only need to hold up to the imperfect scrutiny that you apply to them while they are happening. Of course crazy things are going to happen in an action movie, but if the movie is gripping enough you won't care.
So after "Looper," you might suddenly say--wait, there's a powerful criminal organization that has time travel technology and they only use it to dispose of bodies? Probably some of you are smart enough to think that while the movie is on, but I'm not.
Another issue that I have with Sci-fi movies is the number of things that require my suspension of disbelief. If there are more than one of these things, then I need for them to relate to one another in a logical organic way. So for example, in "Looper," we're told right away that time travel exists. Fine. But then we're told a little later that telekinesis exists--but it's only a parlor trick. So the only conclusion you can draw is that telekinesis will figure strongly in the third act.
So then the movie is requiring me to believe in both time travel and telekinesis independently--but nothing else paranormal. It's not like X-files or Heroes or Misfits or even The Avengers where there's a ton of paranormal things happening and it's the new normal. It would be another thing if one or the other thing led to the other--like time travel technology was made possible by the telekinesis mutation, or the telekinesis mutation was a result of the time travel technology.
But that's a minor quibble. As action movies go, it respects the viewer's intelligence, as time travel movies go (a major subgenre in my taste, as it turns out) it's less impenetrable than many. The silly make-up to turn Joseph Gordon-Levitt into Bruce Willis didn't distract me too much, and I liked all the actors' performances. The main character(s) moves from sympathetic to villainous and back without changing who he is really, just the desperation of his circumstances.
Anyway, if I haven't ruined it yet, check it out.
Shorter review: Better than Batman, not as good as The Avengers.