SICARIO Hits Hard

SICARIO Review:

- A gritty, brutal, bleak, and very badass film - SICARIO features a couple of oh-damn performances and a searing look at the messed-up world of Mexican drug trafficking. If it wasn't already a done-deal before, post-SICARIO there can be no doubt that Emily Blunt is now, officially, the queen-bee reigning badass champion of the world. And while it was sealed and written many years back that Benicio Del Toro was in the badass hall-of-fame, SICARIO is a timely reminder that Del Toro is capable of super badassery on a level that few others have or will attain. Suffice it to say, when Del Toro says "welcome to Juarez," well, you know that stuff is about to go down. And go down it does.

SICARIO casts Blunt as Kate Macer, and FBI agent who is selected to join a government task force assembled to covertly ramp up the drug war against the Mexican cartels. In the name of plausible deniability, Kate enters a world filled with smoke, mirrors, and mysterious characters. One such enigma is Del Toro's Alejandro - a deep-cover operative with a past, a guy whose casual, detached manner just barely masks a rage that burns within. Whereas Kate is a by-the-book type who lived and died by the FBI, Alejandro represents the shady element that the covert border-wars embrace. Kate's increasing disillusionment with the task force's take-no-prisoners tactics run in parallel with her increasing mistrust of Alejandro and his agenda.

Director Denis Villeneuve crafted a moody, atmospheric, and very grim film with his last movie, Prisoners - but Sicario really feels like a step up. The action is gripping and uncompromising, and he helps to craft a story with a number of jaw-dropping twists and turns. What I like about Sicario is how the film doles out character beats around Kate in a way that fleshes her out without ever getting too soapy. But what we do see is how the trauma and stress of her FBI job can follow Kate home - in more ways than one. As Kate journeys further into the heart of darkness, she experiences a crisis of faith in which the people and institutions she trusts seem to each, in turn, betray her. Similarly, we slowly learn more about Alejandro, and go along for the ride as his true mission reveals itself to us in bloody and violent fashion.

There are some other notable performances in the film - namely, Josh Brolin as a good ol' boy government operative who leads Kate's mission. Brolin also recently appeared in a similar role in Everest, but he's better here - as it's a more nuanced role that uses the actor's natural charm as a smokescreen for his anything-goes ruthlessness. There's also a small but crucial role for The Walking Dead's John Bernthal - one which takes full advantage of the actor's unhinged intensity.

Blunt turned a lot of heads in her fantastic, iconic performance in Edge of Tomorrow. Now, she takes that same sort of raw toughness and seamlessly transfers it to a more grounded, real-world setting. In some ways, Blunt's performance here reminds me of Jodie Foster's in Silence of the Lambs - a hard-charging, gets-$%^#-done woman who still finds herself in over her head as she confronts true violence and evil. And Del Toro - the deliverer of much of said violence - is at his best in this one - at the center of at least a couple of jaw-dropping scenes that will forever be emblazoned in my memory.

SICARIO is a hard-boiled look at the drug war and the high price it takes on cities like Juarez that have, because of it, become complete hell-on-earth ground zeroes for violence and death. It's also a look at how far we as a county and as a people are willing to go - how over the line we're willing to step - if those breaches can remain covert and away from the public eye. In the haunted eyes of Blunt and Del Toro, we see, poignantly, the scars. So prepare to be disturbed and maybe a bit shaken by this one - but also prepare for a hard-hitting, ultra-intense action/drama that is a must-see of 2015.

My Grade: A-

INTO THE WOODS Falls Flat

 INTO THE WOODS Review:

- Disney. Fairy tales. Musicals. It all goes together like chocolate and peanut-butter, right? In theory, yes, which is why I went into INTO THE WOODS feeling pretty good about this movie's chances. What I soon discovered, however, is that the film falls into the dreaded category of movie-adaptations-of-stage-musicals-that-still-feel-like-stage-musicals. I get that for fans of the stage play, there may be a certain thrill in seeing what they already know and love up on the big screen, spruced up with A-list acting talent and Hollywood f/x. But for everyone else, me included, I end up watching these sorts of films and wondering "why?" Film is a different medium than stage, and in theory you're not limited in a movie the same way you are in live performance. But INTO THE WOODS stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that. So we see the same locations pop up over and over. We see songs in which heroes frustratingly sing *about* great adventures, without us actually getting to see the adventures. And we have to go through the ritual of hearing lines meant to be delivered to the guy in the back of the auditorium, loudly and with a wink, delivered to no one in particular on-screen. Don't get me wrong, there are moments of INTO THE WOODS that really shine - and the cast is so good that they're able to sort of put the material on their backs and carry it to the finish line. But I felt like a lot had to have been lost in translation here. As is, this felt like a so-so album, from which I'd have preferred to just grab the big singles off iTunes rather than spring for the full enchilada.

Stephen Sondheim's stage version of Into the Woods first played to audiences in 1987, but before and since we've seen many, many iterations of this sort of revisionist fairy tale premise. Even in the world of Disney musicals, last year's Frozen utilized some similar tropes when skewering the traditional "Prince Charming" archetype. And so INTO THE WOODS' fractured fairy tale story feels only partly novel in this big screen adaptation. The tale centers around a humble baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) who desperately want to have a child - but find themselves unable to conceive. It's soon revealed that their inability to have children is in fact due to a witch's curse, struck upon the baker's father and intended to affect his entire bloodline. However, the witch (Meryl Streep) is in a bargaining mood: she agrees to remove the curse, if the baker and his wife procure a collection of items needed for the witch to cast a spell that will remove her own curse, restoring her beauty. As it happens, the items the baker needs are all fairy tale staples, and as he seeks them out it leads he and his wife into the woods, where they stumble upon the likes of Cinderella, Prince Charming, Jack (of Jack and the Beanstalk), Little Red Riding Hood, The Big Bad Wolf, and other storybook characters. The result is a greatest-hits version of many popular stories (many of which have, over the years, been themselves adapted into Disney films), except usually with a slight twist. The stories are all modified to better suit their interconnectedness, and each is given a darkly funny twist or two, in keeping with the film's arched-eyebrow approach to the classic fairy tales it gently skewers.

The problem is that the skewering is so gentle that it feels barely-there. Perhaps the film doesn't have quite the sharpened edge of the stage play, but it certainly doesn't have enough bite to feel all that novel, or even that funny. The film's funniest moments involve Chris Pine's Prince Charming, who - though we've seen this sort of take on the noble prince before - manages to be a high point with his over-the-top, self-involved swagger. Pine at least gets to play a character where the joke is clear. Meanwhile, other talented actors and performers are saddled with characters who feel only half-formed. Emily Blunt, for example, is absolutely giving it her all here and knocks all of her songs out of the park. But who is the Baker's Wife supposed to be, exactly? Some late-movie revelations about her character seem out-of-left-field and undercooked. And that's true of a lot of the movie's characters. The story tries to pack in so much that a lot of stuff feels rushed. I honestly had little idea what was going on with Meryl Streep's witch during the movie's second half. People who had seen the play later gave me the scoop. But the movie often seems to cut things short before we've even gotten the punchline or proper payoff.

Lack of payoff also means that, as mentioned, the movie seems unnecessarily beholden to the confines of the stage. Here's an example: Jack's big song about climbing his beanstalk and meeting (and stealing from) the giants who live in the clouds above. It's a fun song - and young actor Daniel Huttlestone nails it. But it also left me wondering why we were listening to Jack singing about giants rather than seeing Jack's adventures play out for ourselves. Director Rob Marshall - who also did the film version of Chicago - seems to forget that in a movie you can juxtapose whatever images you want over the songs. But instead of giants, we watch Jack swinging around a tree for ten minutes. Every so often, the stage-y direction works to the film's advantage - as when Chris Pine's Prince (who dotes after Anna Kendrick's Cinderella), and his brother, a Prince (played by Billy Magnussen, and who pines after Mackenzie Mauzy's Rapunzel) share a comedic song about their mutual anguish atop a waterfall. But more often than not, I was left wishing that the movie would break away from its source material and really go big with its visuals. Certainly, the subject matter calls for it.

What really keeps the film afloat is the cast. I've talked about Chris Pine and Emily Blunt, but Anna Kendrick, Meryl Streep, James Corden, and a host of others deserve credit for really giving it their all, and making most of the film's songs - even when they're not super-catchy - come off as spirited and energetic. I'll also give special mention to the movie's two kid leads - Daniel Huttlestone as Jack and Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood. Both are real scene-stealers, and they might just be the best performers, song-wise, in the movie. As for Johnny Depp as the Big Bad Wolf? He's okay. The Wolf seems like sort of a wasted character in the film - he appears relatively briefly, and doesn't make much of an impression beyond the fact that his costume is really lame. I mean, come on, this is a musical about fairy tales - who decided that the Wolf was just going to be a creepy guy with a mustache? It's another of the movie's odd aesthetic choices that seems to stubbornly insist on preserving the look and feel of the stage. 

I initially was charmed by INTO THE WOODS big opening number, but it turned out that the film just keeps losing steams as it goes. By the film's conclusion, it had become incredibly draggy. There are some bright spots along the way, but mostly, the jokes lack punch, the riffs on fairy tale characters seem obvious and not particularly clever, and the songs - while performed ably by the cast - are not particularly memorable. Hardcore fans of the musical may find bits and pieces to latch onto,  but it seems that whatever wit and cleverness was in the original has been, mostly, sliced and diced from this version. For most, this one is bound to fall flat.

My Grade: C

EDGE OF TOMORROW Is This Summer's Blockbuster To Beat

EDGE OF TOMORROW Review:

- EDGE OF TOMORROW is the best blockbuster movie of the summer so far. Brilliantly-scripted, directed, and acted, it's an uber-satisfying sci-fi action thriller that takes full advantage of the possibilities inherent in its premise. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt both bring their A-games in the lead roles. Cruise puts a new twist on his typical ultra-intense and hyper-competent action movie persona, and Blunt fully establishes herself as a real-deal badass for the ages. Meanwhile, director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) returns to film after an extended stay in TV, and completely knocks it out of the park. This is the best thing he's ever done, by far.

What's so cool about EDGE OF TOMORROW is that it takes its Groundhog Day-style do-over premise and melds it with the logic and experience of playing a videogame. In that way, there's a weird kinship between this film and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which also applied videogame logic and methodology in its storytelling.

In Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise plays Cage, who begins the film as a snotty PR man working for the military, whose job is essentially to push the military's message out to the public via press conferences, talk show appearances, etc. The military needs all the good PR it can get. In this near-future earth, the planet has been invaded by a horde of conquering aliens called Mimics, whose liquid-metal bodies dart around a battlefield like out-of-control buzz-saws. The humans' new united army is not faring all that well in the battle, and they're gearing up for one last stand - an epic battle that aims to take the fight to the Mimics, all-or-nothing. One of the great heroes of the military effort is Emily Blunt's Rita, affectionately known as "The Full-Metal Bitch." Rita and the rest of the military wage war in mech-like combat suits, stomping around the battlefield adorned with all manner of mechanized heavy artillery enhancements. Cage, however, finds himself unexpectedly ordered by commanding officer General Brigham (the always-great Brendan Gleeson) to head to battle. This big last stand is an all-hands-on-deck deal, and Brigham orders Cage to fight. Cage tries to object, but when he attempts to get out of Dodge, he's forcibly taken to the central army base and inserted by his gruff supervising Sergeant (an over-the-top Bill Paxton) into a ragtag unit of misfits and losers. Soon enough, Cage is on a nightmarish battlefield, fending off Mimics, unable to even properly operate his mech suit or weapons. And then ... he dies.

However, due to a strange set of circumstances that I won't reveal here, Cruise's Cage becomes possessed of a unique ability: when he dies, he essentially travels back in time to a fixed point (in this case, it's the moment when he is first dropped off at the army base), and respawns, videogame-style. When he comes back, he maintains all of the knowledge of his previous "life," and his challenge lies in applying what he learned before dying, to ensure his survival in the next go-round. Soon though, Cage learns that it isn't only his survival on the line. His unique power allows him to use his knowledge of what's to come to warn the military about the futility of the battle ahead. And as it turns out, Rita is aware of Cage's ability, and has been manipulating events in order to fully exploit it to help win the battle against the Mimics. The stakes are high. There is a ticking clock on Cage's ability to respawn, and so he needs to do everything he can to give humans the advantage in the war's looming endgame.

All of this plot-resetting could have easily become tedious and repetitive, but it's handled so cleverly that it actually becomes thrilling. Cage's actions increasingly deviate from their original path from life to life, and seeing Cage essentially piece together the puzzle of what he has to do to change the tide of the battle is fascinating. Moreover, since Cage starts out as sort of a wimp - a pencil-pusher comfortable in front of a TV camera, but totally out of his element in a fight - seeing him gradually transition to a full-fledged badass (under the guidance of Rita) - brings with it a sort of satisfaction that we rarely see in these sorts of movies, where heroes tend to be born and not made. Cruise is excellent in the film - he's always great in these sorts of high-intensity action roles, but this one really stands out since it takes him the entirety of the film to fully become "Tom Cruise: Action Hero." At first though, he's just a guy who's in way over his head. And Cruise does that part of the role as well, if not better, than when Cage is at the height of his powers later on.

Emily Blunt flat-out kicks ass as Rita, who is one of the best female characters in an action movie in quite some time. Rita feels fully-formed - she has a clear inner life separate from her relationship with Cage, and it's her planning, smarts, and badassery that actually drives the plot's forward-momentum for much of the film. Rita is, for most of the film, the one guiding Cage's life-to-life strategy, formulating the game plan as to how he can use his ability to make a difference and course-correct. Blunt previously showed her action chops in Looper, but this is a whole new level of awesome. I actually think that, aside from the wow-factor of seeing Blunt in a high-tech combat suit wielding helicopter-blade weapons, this is some of the best acting I've ever seen from the actress. Her Rita is a fierce, driven, extremely capable soldier who is quite simply a fantastic and memorable character. If you remember one thing from Edge of Tomorrow, it will likely be Blunt as the "Full Metal Bitch."

Blunt and Cruise also work really well together. What's nice is that the film acknowledges some chemistry and builds a meaningful relationship between the two, but romance is not a central aspect of the story. These are two soldiers with big things at stake, and so the bond that builds between them happens organically, and is more complicated and nuanced than in a typical star-crossed Hollywood romance. This again contributes to the strength of Blunt's character - her partnership with Cage is a key element of the story, but the personal relationship isn't what's driving the story. Their shared determination to save the human race is the driver, and that means that the stakes are never undermined by the need for the dramatic kiss or what have you (see: Superman and Lois making time for a dramatic lip-lock as Metropolis burns around them in Man of Steel).

What's also surprising is that amid the darkness and bleakness of this futuristic, war-torn world, the movie still makes time for a lot of lighter moments, and even humor. The movie is actually really funny and witty at times. There's some great playful banter between Cage and Rita. Bill Paxton's corn-fed Sergeant Farell is consistently entertaining-as-hell and funny. And Noah Taylor's Dr. Carter, the slightly-mad scientist who teams with Cage and Rita to discover the alien adversary's weakness, is also a lot of fun. Point being, EDGE OF TOMORROW is far from the grim slog that some of the trailers made it out to be. It's actually a really fun and audience-pleasing ride that balances out its darker moments with good old-fashioned Summer Blockbuster entertainment.

To that end, Doug Liman tears the house down with his direction on this one. The movie moves along at an always-exciting, rapid-fire clip. And the big action set-pieces are some of the best of any sci-fi blockbuster in years. Again, a lot of the reason these scenes work so well is because of the way they're built up. We're not just seeing sound and fury, we're seeing action that continually shows us Cage learning from past mistakes and improving his combat abilities and survival skills. Sure, having already lived out certain moments, he gets to play god and anticipate an adversary's move before it even happens. But more than that, he is self-upgrading, acting out a real-life process of videogame-esque leveling up. And that is thrilling to watch.

The movie perfectly captures the risk/reward process of playing through and advancing through a videogame. Of learning from failures and evolving until one is truly the master of the game - fully in control of its mechanics, able to anticipate obstacles and navigate through challenges with ease. In turn, the videogame-style structure, as in Scott Pilgrim, becomes a way of looking at life. Live, die, repeat, win. Our days, our hopes, our struggles, in microcosm. EDGE OF TOMORROW tells a great story, but the underlying smarts of how that story is presented is what makes it so impressive. Even those who've never played a videogame will, I think, get caught up in the rush of "okay, what now?" logic puzzles that the film invites us to live out alongside Cage and Rita. It all feels so fresh, presented in such a novel way, that I want to say that this is the flat-out best sci-fi action film since District 9. It seems like bland marketing may have hurt this one at the box-office, but the fact is that the movie is one of the more unique and original action blockbuster films in years. Go see it - THIS is the big movie to beat this summer.

My Grade: A

LOOPER Assaults With a Barrage of High-Concept Sci-Fi

LOOPER Review:

- Those going into Looper expecting a generic sci-fi shoot-'em-up are going to be pretty surprised by what they find. While LOOPER has its share of kickass action scenes, this movie is legit, thought-provoking science fiction. It's a mind-bender of epic proportions - a film that many will compare to classics like Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys, as well as modern favorites like District 9 and Inception. There's a little bit of all of those movies in Looper - and some similarities to this year's Chronicle as well. But it feels like it's own, distinct thing in large part because writer/director Rian Johnson is such a distinct filmmaker. When I saw his debut film,  Brick, several years back ... I knew that this was someone to keep an eye on - a guy who played with the trappings of genre filmmaking, but a guy who was also determined to make films that defied easy categorization. In Looper, you've got some of Blade Runner's darkly-tinged sci-fi noir. You've got some of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly's Spaghetti Western, gunslinger-on-a-mission aesthetic. You've got some Nolan-esque twists, and some comic-book style secret origins. But the key thing is ... every time you think you've got Looper pegged, it surprises you. The result: a sci-fi film that is unique and rewarding, that will spur geeky discussions for years to come, and that creates an atmosphere of utter intensity, awe, and wonder. Looper has its flaws, but it's also one of those movies that you can't help but admire. Because it seems to mark the emergence of a cinematic voice that, while influenced by the past and by his peers, has now leapfrogged into the big leagues. Rian Johnson, with Looper, has just made a major statement.

The premise of Looper is one of those sci-fi contraptions that provokes a thousand questions. Luckily, the film is pretty good about giving us context and some basic rules that help the story to make sense. Fifty years or so in the future, America has devolved into a state of chaos and poverty. Unchecked crime is rampant, the streets are dangerous, and the average person is struggling not just with money, but for survival. It is under these harsh conditions that the criminals known as Loopers come to be. As it turns out, time-travel hasn't been invented yet, but in thirty years from the film's present, it will be. In that future-future world, time travel is outlawed, but it's used on-the-sly by savvy mob-bosses to stealthily dispose of their victims. In the totalitarian-ish state of eighty-years-from-now, it seems forensics and tracking tech have made murder all but impossible to get away with. The solution is: employ "Loopers" in the more chaotic past to do the future-mob's dirty work. The Loopers are rewarded with money, drugs, and women. The one twist is that their job comes with a thirty-year expiration date. In thirty years' time, the Loopers are rounded up and sent back in time with a pile of cash strapped to their back. They are then executed by their younger selves - "closing the loop." Sure, in thirty years', the Loopers are liabilities. But until then, the young men recruited for the job get to live large.

The film follows a Looper named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - the youngest Looper ever recruited. Problems arise for Joe when it comes time for him to execute his older self (Bruce Willis). I won't spoil anything ... I'll just say that Old Joe comes back determined not to get killed by Young Joe. He has to see through his mission - a mission to drastically change the past in order to prevent tragedies - both personal and global - that will befall him in the future. But Old Joe's escape poses major problems for his younger self, as Levitt now has his angry employers in pursuit of both him and Willis. But as Young Joe learns more about Old Joe's mission, the question becomes ... will Young Joe come around to his older self's way of thinking, or will he determine that this older version someone who's gone off the reservation, and who has to be stopped?

What LOOPER deftly sets up is a three-way showdown between Young Joe, Old Joe, and the organization that's after them both - led by sent-back-from-the-future Abe (a fantastic Jeff Daniels), and his right-hand man/lackey, the trigger-happy Kid Blue (Noah Segan, in a part destined for cult-favorite status).

At first, the movie plays things fairly straight. Levitt vs. Willis vs. Daniels. There are shoot-outs, narrow escapes, and questioned loyalties. But somewhere towards the middle of the film, Rian Johnson throws us a giant curveball. Young Joe, attempting to intercept his older self, finds himself away from the grimy, gritty city streets where much of the film had heretofore taken place. Suddenly - in a jarring twist - we're at a desolate farm. There, Levitt meets a mysterious woman, Sara (Emily Blunt - also great, rocking a Southern accent and a shotgun) and her even more mysterious son, Cid. And suddenly, the tone of the film shifts, the pace slows, and we realize that Looper is not quite the movie we thought it was.

Rian Johnson takes some major risks here. As I alluded to, he brings the movie to a jarring halt midway through, slowing things down and beginning to build towards a surprising third act. After the rollicking introduction of Willis' badass Old Joe, it's weird to see him suddenly relegated to the background of the movie, as the film shifts the focal point of the action to Sara's farm. During some of the extended farm scenes, you could feel the audience in the theater squirming a bit. And some of that, I get. Johnson almost seems to pack a 12-part HBO miniseries into one movie. If given more time to breathe, certain aspects of the film might have felt even more meaningful and powerful. Johnson is creating a world - and I mean a *world* here, with a mythology that takes on a fairly giant scope over the course of two hours. What this means is that Looper leaves you with a ton of questions. Some of that is intentional by Johnson, I think - I think he likes dropping little hints that make you raise an eyebrow and say "wait, what?!". But I also think that it's partly because there is just *so much* going on here ... it couldn't all be contained in a two-hour movie. I'm sure Johnson will take great pleasure in knowing that film fans will long ask questions like "how *did* Sara know about Loopers?" and "what *is* the nature of the relationship between Abe and Kid Blue?" But I'm a little back-and-forth about all of the ambiguity. Okay, movies like Blade Runner did it. But Blade Runner's ambiguity was mostly centered around one, central question - is or isn't Deckard a Replicant? LOOPER, on the other hand, seems to take almost sadistic pleasure in dropping all kinds of "hmm, well, what do *you* think happened?" questions at its audience. Let me put it this way: either there will be sequels, spin-offs, comics, etc. that explain more of the backstory, or else there is *a lot* in this film that will be perpetually debated.

By that same token though ... Johnson does a nice job of shading in a lot of the "rules" of his universe. Not in a strict "here are the five rules of time-travel" sense, but in a "here's what time travel is like in this world" sense. In short, time-travel in Looper is messy, cloudy, and can be used in very sadistic ways in order to %$#& with someone. Johnson has some very, very effective and memorable time-travel moments. Some are emotional, as with Old Joe desperately trying to hold on to memories of his wife, even as those memories are retroactively dissolved by Young Joe's future-changing actions. Some are physical, as in a horrifying scene in which a young version of a Looper is tortured and mutilated, and we see, in real-time, the grotesque effects on the older version materialize. Disturbing as hell. That's the thing about Looper though - it keeps throwing crazy moments at you. It ensures that you're in a constant state of wondering what the hell is going to happen next.

Earlier, I mentioned how Rian Johnson's tendency to be a bit ... arty ... with aspects of the plot can ocassionally be a bit frustrating. But Johnson's determination to try things that are unique and different is also one of the movie's greatest strengths. Especially from a visual standpoint. From the first scene, where a man from the future is zapped into the past, only to be suddenly and brutally dispatched by a Looper, you know that this is not your ordinary sci-fi blockbuster. Johnson also visually plays with the looping nature of time-travel. When we see Old and Young Joe's first encounter originally, it's shot in a standard action-movie style that makes Bruce Willis seem like a badass. When we see it a second time later in the film, it's shot from afar, plainly, in a way that highlights the absurdity of the whole encounter. To that end, there's also a streak of dark gallows humor that runs through the film. To be sure, this is a bleak, gritty, hard-R flick ... but it also has some fun with its over-the-top premise. I'll say it again though - Johnson's relentless experimentation with story and style is both the movie's greatest strength and weakness. It can be frustrating that the pace is inconsistent, and that the script asks you to fill in so many gaps. But it's also totally thrilling to see a movie that zips from a chase scene, to a shoot-out, to a sensory-overload flash-forward through thirty years of Young Joe's transition into Old Joe, to quiet-but-ominous scenes on a remote farm, to an apocalyptic climax worthy of the most ambitious superhero comic books.

While LOOPER is in many ways a showcase piece for Rian Johnson, it's also one of the most memorable roles to date for Joseph Gordon Levitt. Levitt has been in a ton of movies this year, but this is the role in which he really ups his game. Going in, I had no idea how Levitt would convincingly play a young version of Bruce Willis. As it turns out, he nails it. Some skillfully-crafted prosthetics help to give him more similar facial features. But ultimately, the character is sold by Levitt's facial expressions, his body language, the way he talks, and the way he transforms himself into a young Bruce, without ever feeling like he's doing a mere imitation or gimmick. Pretty remarkable stuff. Levitt carries the movie in a way that we've rarely seen from him before (perhaps not since Johnson last cast him, in Brick). For his part, Willis is also exceptional in this one. He gets to kick ass and be awesome, but he's also got a character with real depth. Old Joe goes to some very, very dark places, so it's not a cut-and-dried case of rooting for or against him. That said, you've got to enjoy Willis' performance, because he seems more invested and alive in this role than he's been in a long time. And also, Jeff Daniels is a scene-stealer. He makes Abe both funny and menacing. Emily Blunt - wow. I knew she could play a certain type of part very well, but I never expected her to own it as a tough-as-nails farmgirl.Color me impressed. Pierce Gagnon also almost steals the movie as her creepy son Cid. This is one of the most striking young-kid performances in a movie I've seen. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that Twilight Zone fans will instantly draw a connection between Cid and one of that show's most famous characters. Except that Cid may be even more disturbing, in his way. Noah Segan as Kid Blue ... he is sort of the Bobba Fett of the movie. On the perimeter of the plot, but kind of awesome because he is a bit mysterious. You get the sense that there's a whole other movie that could have been made about Kid Blue and Abe - his father figure from the future. Paul Dano pops up as a Looper, and he's very good - his usual manic energy is perfect for the role. Another nice surprise is Garret Dillahunt (Deadwood, Raising Hope) as Jesse - a dangerous employee of Abe's. His quiet menace is perfect for the part.

Looper is a movie that *can* be picked apart. Johnson leaves it open to a lot of scrutiny, and a lot of questions. But he does something interesting here and says that, look, we don't know how time-travel works - here are some basic rules, the rest is messy and malleable. But ultimately, this is less a movie of science and more a movie of ideas. Is it possible for one man to change so much over 30 years that he'd fundamentally be at odds with his younger self? How far would / should one go to protect their loved ones, and when is the line that is crossed simply going too far? What forces shape someone into a good person versus an evil one, and can one man or woman's influence be enough to stem the tide? Looper puts all of these big ideas front and center, and leaves it up to us to fill in some of the details. But it gives us just enough plot to latch onto, and it poses the big questions so vividly, that you can't help but think about them long after the movie is over. I do think that the messiness keeps this from being quite on the level of some of the classics that inspired it. But by the same token, that barrage of ideas, of experimentation, and of originality is what places it, easily, above so many of the generic sci-fi blockbusters we're used to seeing these days.

My Grade: A-