94% Looper

All Critics (218) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (204) | Rotten (14)

The reasoning behind all this may not reward prolonged inspection, but Johnson is smart enough to press onward with his plot, leaving us with neither the time nor the desire to linger over the logic ...

Writer-director Rian Johnson establishes himself as an original talent who clearly believes storytelling must prevail.

A mind-bending ride that is not afraid to slow down now and again, to explore themes of regret and redemption, solitude and sacrifice, love and loss. It's a movie worth seeing and, perhaps, going back to see again.

Looper has more heart than Brick and the 2008 con-man flick The Brothers Bloom. Both fine achievements, they could also be described as viscerally cerebral.

I'm a sucker for time-travel movies.

Looper felt to me like a maddening near-miss ...

Doesn't quite reach the heights of the lofty ideals that it so ardently seeks to expound, but makes up for this with the sheer thrill of the journey Rian Johnson takes us on.

Ingenious with a fine performance by Emily Blunt, but far too much cold-blooded violence.

Engaging, exciting, and successfully cross-breeding elements of Terminator and even Pet Sematary, Looper is a solid work of palatable science-fiction.

Looper's super. An action-thriller that bothers to have a brain.

Looper may not take us back to the future as satisfyingly as Robert Zemeckis' Marty McFly trilogy or James Cameron's Terminator franchise, but writer-director Rian Johnson does enough right to all but guarantee that he has a future cult film on the books.

The best time travel films play on emotion rather than logic, and once Looper realises this and drops all the tail-chasing about how time travel works it settles into the engrossing action/drama about destiny it should have been from the get go.

Has more depth, smarts, and heart than the usual sci-fi bluster.

A just about brilliant sci-fi crime-drama-thriller mostly set in the years 2044 and 2074. Rian Johnson is a rare director who creates entertainment with depth.

The key to enjoying the gruesome violence mixed with a healthy potion of emotional depth rarely found in this genre is to not dwell on the fiction in the science.

Sometimes time travel is just used a cheap device in movies to make them seem different; this is not one of those films. It's genuinely unique and fresh.

Very entertaining on many, many levels.

The best kind of light entertainment that expects you to be just as intelligent as it is.

It's complex enough that sci-fi fans can dig deeper over multiple viewings, but thrilling enough that casual viewers can take it all in with one watch.

...an above-average sci-fi tale.

Rian Johnson makes a loud, dark, highly stylized film that looks good but whose ideas do not really bear close examination.

Time travel makes sense in Looper because writer-director Rian Johnson keeps it on a short leash, not requiring enough manufactured logic to trip over later.

I don't know where you guys found that kid... Was it the same lab where they grew the Fannings?

Besides a challenging time-travel premise, a dark sense of humor, and some thrilling action scenes, Looper has the kind emotional weight that you wouldn't expect.

... Writer-director Rian Johnson never stops working, using the science-fiction setup and trappings to delve into the characters and give us a story with some real meat.

You don't need time-travel to spot a future cult classic.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/looper/

troy miracle andy whitfield kennedy demi moore roy oswalt kevin martin