Looper

Regular readers will know I've had a tumultuous relationship with Looper, the third film from writer/director Rian Johnson. I loved Brick, and even wrote a post expressing my excitement and fears for the upcoming film, but alas when I went to see the film the first time around I passed out half an hour in, for reasons as yet undetermined. There's an entire team of doctors and medical students currently scratching each others heads just trying to work out what - or rather, how many things - are wrong with me. But failing to fully see the film first time around gave me an opportunity to see The Brothers Bloom, Johnson's second film, before watching the rest of his third. I have now managed to successfully see the entire film, in one sitting, having paid for a total of four cinema tickets (me + girlfriend first time around, me + friend second time around, Aisha didn't want to see it again). And, personally, I think it was worth it.

Speed

100^th film! Although really I’d have preferred it to have been the 50^th, seeing as it’s about a bus, rigged with a bomb that activates once the bus reaches 50 miles per hour, detonating should the buses speed drop below 50. The planter of the bomb is Dennis Hopper’s vengeful psychotic ex-cop Howard Payne, angry at Keanu Reeves and Jeff Daniels’ foiling of his first elevator-based hostage situation and eager for a paycheck he feels he’s been cheated. But you don’t care about the motive or who’s behind it, as Payne tells Reeves’ Jack Traven, “Your concern is the bus.” Whenever the film detracts from this central conceit, be it following the non bus bound cops trying to track down Payne or Hopper himself watching the action unfold on the ever present media, the pacing immediately slackens, so enticing is the central plot.

Physics and logic take a back seat in this crowd pleasing actioner (It’s the kind of film where the only by-the-book police procedure results in carnage), with the infamous bus jump being the most forhead-slappingly annoying, and the subway-set finale is a bit of a letdown, but the supporting characters, including Alan Ruck’s sight-seeing tourist (“The airport? I’ve already seen the airport.”) and Beth Grant’s hysterical commuter easily outshine the largely wooden performances from Reeves (once again earning his nickname of ‘The Wall’) and Sandra Bullock as a fellow passenger/love interest.

Choose life 6/10