Thrown for a Loop

I finally got around to seeing Looper. Hmm...
I'm not actually sure what I think about it. There are parts of it, like the acting, that are pretty great, although I'm not the big fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt that everyone seems to be. I'm just not seeing what the big deal is. Bruce Willis, on the other hand... Well, I like Bruce.

Time travel stories are... difficult. Star Trek is proof of that. I think two things play into it: 1. No one can agree on how time travel would actually work if it's possible. Or if it's possible. 2. Because of that, writers like to use it as a magic wand. It's one of those things I kind of hate in science fiction, when the writer uses some bit of science like it's magic just because no one knows how it works. If you want to write magic, go write fantasy.

Still, all in all, I don't think the time travel was handled too poorly in Looper other than the constant paradoxes that were never addressed. What I have a problem with is being lied to, and, in essence, the movie hinges on a lie, and that really bothers me.

Now, I don't have a problem with being deceived through sleight-of-hand and trickery. The Sixth Sense is so great because Shyamalan  never lied to the audience. He laid everything out there for us to see and allowed us not to see it. A couple of movies that are very similar except that one lies and one doesn't are The Prestige and The Illusionist (which I talk about for a bit here). The Illusionist achieves its climax by lying to the audience (through omission) all the way through, which is the only reason we are unable to piece the plot together. I really have no respect for that.

Now, if you haven't seen Looper, there will be spoilers.

The whole story of Looper hinges on  the belief by the audience that young Joe dies when he falls from the ladder. At that point, the movie jumps back as if that is the moment that causes the reset. When it starts over, we accept that we are seeing a different time line because of the presentation, and it's not true. It's not like in The Sixth Sense when Crowe gets shot. Afterward, the audience just assumes that Crowe didn't die even though Shyamalan tells us several times, "look, this guy's dead." We just can't see it. In Looper, the truth is never offered until the end, when the lie is revealed, and that's just a cheap way of doing it.

To make matters worse, the director or the writer or someone comes out and tells us that the movie isn't going to make any sense and not to think about it. Young Joe and Old Joe are sitting in a diner together, and Young Joe asks Old Joe about time travel, and Old Joe says, "I don't want to talk about time travel because, if we start talking about it, then, we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws." Rough translation: "Don't think about it; just watch the movie. We can't explain it either." On the one hand, I'm glad they're honest about it. "Look, we just want to tell our story, so don't go trying to logic it, because it won't make any sense." [And it doesn't.] On the other hand, I'm kind of insulted. It says to me that they didn't want to bother with telling a story that makes sense, which devalues me as the audience. And, then, they lie to make it work.

The other thing that really bothers me is that the movie didn't happen, and I hate stories that didn't happen. I hate getting to the end and finding out that it was all a dream or a vision or a whatever. I mean, this was as bad as Next with Nicolas Cage. You get to the end and find out that, really, the movie ended right there when Young Joe kills Old Joe at the beginning of the movie. That's it. End of story. Everything else is just "closing the loop" and doesn't actually exist. I really felt cheated.

Even so, there are some good moments in the film. When Old Seth is trying to get to Young Seth and losing body parts all along the way... man, that's just freaky. It doesn't make any sense from a paradox perspective, but it's creepy enough that you don't care. The horror of that moment as his fingers start disappearing is gut wrenching. Also, I really liked Paul Dano as Young Seth.

There's a lot of humor, dark humor, in the fact that Old Joe keeps beating the crap out of his younger self. There's the urge to slap Young Joe for not listening to his older self, but, then, that's how all kids are, right?  And there's the fact that the good guys don't win. How could they? There are no good guys. But there aren't a lot of movies these days where the protagonist (hero or anti-hero) fails, and that's almost enough to make Looper worth watching all by itself.

If you're willing to just turn your brain off and watch and if you don't mind being lied to, Looper is definitely worth your time, just don't ever say, "But why...?"

Oh, also, a big part of why Looper works is the inherent belief of the audience (and that includes me) in the badassness of Bruce Willis. There is nothing in the movie to support Joe being any kind of badass. In fact, he's more of a loser, drug addict than anything else. However, because our image of Willis is that he's a badass, we don't question him single-handedly taking down a criminal organization even though there is nothing in the movie to support this.

I just missed your heart...

In the past week or so, I've come across several lists of the toughest chicks in fiction. Some of these were for chicks in movies. Some for television. Some for both. Some from literature. None of these lists included Hanna, and for that, I think they are all lacking. Yes, even the literature lists should have included Hanna; she's that kick butt! In fact, she's so kick butt, I'm sure that that's where that movie came from. Someone said, "Hey! Let's make a movie about a young girl that can kick butt like no body's business!"

Someone else tried to ruin  the party by saying, "But, wait, why can she kick so much butt?"

And that's where it all fell apart.

The movie, Hanna, is strung together on the very thinnest of plots. I mean Run, Lola, Run thin, but that one works better, because that's all the movie's supposed to be about. But the makers of Hanna, evidently, wanted the movie to appear as if it contains substance, so they tried to write a story as to why Hanna can and does kick so much butt. And I say makers, because I have no idea who might be at fault for this ill-conceived notion. Was it just bad writing from the start? Did the director dispense with the story in favor of the action? Did the producers demand it? Also, speaking of Lola, and I didn't time it, but I would guess somewhere close to 1/3 of Hanna is actually just music video of (mostly) her just running. Or crawling. Being chased, at any rate. Sometimes it's Erik.

Having said all of that, if you like a good action flick and don't need much story, it's a great movie. My friend, who took me to see it, certainly liked it much better than I did. The fight scenes are well done, and there's plenty of suspense wrapped up in the action. And running. Lots of running. And I bet the director or the writer or someone thought they were being very clever by wrapping the movies ending up in a circle to tie it back to the opening. Oh, but wait, I'm letting my antipathy for the story slip back in there.

The biggest issue with the story is that it resorts to the "big reveal" in order to explain the story all at once because it failed to provide the viewers with enough information as the movie progressed to figure anything out on  their own. Really, I hate this. Especially since they could have allowed us the information throughout the movie by cutting out 10 minutes of running.

Let me just say, though, that I'm not dissing "the big reveal" in and of itself. It's often a necessary plot device, especially in mysteries; however, if done poorly, it can ruin what might have been a good story. Here's an example from a couple of similar movies that were released back-to-back:

1. The Prestige (Oct, 2006): A movie about two magicians obsessed with learning how the other has performed a career-making trick. The clues are provided throughout the movie. If the viewer pays attention, s/he is able to put the pieces together and figure it out in advance. Or, at least, parts of it. When the big reveal (the prestige) comes, it is only to fill in viewers who may not have caught all of the clues. Very well done. [I own this movie, by the way. Hugh Jackman is excellent. It's also the type of movie that is better on a second or third viewing as you can see how the puzzle pieces are being put together.]

2. The Illusionist (Sept, 2006): Another movie about a magician pulling off an extraordinary illusion. The illusion is, in effect, the plot. The key to the movie. However, the movie fails to provide the information needed for the viewer to figure out the puzzle, so, during the big reveal, there are flashbacks with allow us to see all of the pieces that were not actually shown the first time through. Basically, the audience is not allowed to figure it out in process but thrown all of the left out pieces at the very end in order to see the whole picture. I find this to be a very cheap trick. Basically, the writer could not figure out a way to seed the story with the pieces needed so just withheld them all. This is the tactic Hanna uses.

Just a note: I think the best usage of the big reveal, at least in any recent movie, was The Sixth Sense. In fact, Shyamalan did it so well in that movie that it has sustained him for more than a decade of increasingly worse movies. That was free.

There was one other very positive aspect of Hanna: the acting. Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett are both excellent. In fact, they are the two characters that give the movie any sort of depth and weight. Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) does a fine job, but I haven't seen her in anything else, so I'm not sure if it was acting ability or just the way she is.

Well, I hope you still had your pop culture hats on from last time, but you can take them off now. At least, for a little while.