Touch My Own Leg

I'm not going to tell you anything about the premise except that it's explained to you in a sort of prologue. Let's talk about the merits of the reel instead.

I think it's a very solid science fiction movie in the mould of Source Code, Chronicle and The Adjustment Bureau. It's a solid production with a solid premise. Nothing incredibly fancy, but more than the usual bore. It's got good actors that don't annoy you and don't chew scenery. The treatment is pretty straight and there are proper scenes to set things up, there's a climax, there's a half-open conclusion.

Things play out more or less as you expect, but there's a hiccup along the way to keep things interesting and add a small wrinkle to the thing. Things like this are hard to talk about because they are, again, pretty solid. They don't knock you off your feet or make you shuffle your feet out of the theatre.

It's a noble way to earn money. There's a small budget and you get A- listers. They have (solid) acting chops and know their place. They're very professional and you don't expect there to be any problems in filming. There's the understanding that this is a plot-driven movie and it has to stay that way. It hardly ever becomes brilliant and the really good ones aren't of any higher concentration than in the whole medium.

What we have here is a bit of time travel and it's actually a pretty cool premise. There's a little bit (I shouldn't be telling you this) early on which comes off as a by the way but foreshadows things that will be quite important later on. The characters are flawed too. They kill people for a living, they have their favourite rent-girl, they are junkies. They drive fast in the streets almost running over pedestrians. They don't really care about pedestrians. They double-cross their friends. They only really care about themselves. They are not boy scouts but that's never stopped us before.

To say a bit about the characters, the high point of Gordon-Levitt for me is still Inception. He was pretty likeable there although he admittedly didn't do anything there. I'm not sure how he'll do in Premium Rush but it's likely I don't go out and check that. In a bigger role (The Dark Knight Rises and Looper), he doesn't have the charisma, the everyman quality to carry a (thirty million dollar) film. He's really pretty but he's not cool enough and he's not raw enough to bring it; he needs a character who's interesting from the get-go. Bruce Willis is an anomaly and a non-factor. You don't (and never) get a bead on his character and you don't (and never) feel his drive. It feels almost like he's mailing it in here; no broken man, no bitter man, no hound dog.

Emily Blunt was really pretty in The Adjusment Bureau and really not like that here. It might be in the mom make-up but she doesn't have the broken tenderness (think Eva Green in Casino Royale) or A- leading lady balls. She doesn't add to the movie and is little more than dead weight (I'll talk a bit about their subplot later). As someone who has a bit part, Paul Dano is remarkable if only because he's in a character I actually like, very not There Will Be Blood or Cowboys and Aliens.

The talk at the diner is a good example of how characters can drag a picture down. I concede that Gordon-Levitt and Willis have some sort of chemistry between them. They can snap at each other and all that but it's not enough. If there was a meter that went from good chemistry to acting like there is chemistry, it's closer to the latter. The story sputters and what I was expecting to be a cool exchange and them working together, beating the bad guys, things stall a bit and it's Heat all over again. From a quantitative standpoint, that scene is a plus because it doesn't do what you think it'll do by dividing the characters, but it doesn't sit well with you and you keep thinking that, surely, there was a better way to pull that off.

I admit I have a really hard time connecting to characters so they really have to bring their A-game. They didn't here and there's no excitement and panic here; as it is it's a bit lightweight. I don't need it to be a Terry Gilliam movie with the dizzy mess and all, but I want emotion spots on the screen.

Now as always, a complication develops and the good guys have to face-off the system. I do have a few, well, it's between qualms and questions. They are odd things that I noticed as I was watching the thing. First, I'm not sure what was happening to old Paul Dano and okay it turns out young Paul Dano was being mutilated and I guess that's in keeping with the bad guy nature of some of the characters. I didn't get that when I was watching and I actually thought it was some subplot about escaped loops. There's also the interesting thing about some time-segues that I thought showed too much. I now knew too much and I'd like to think I could have figured it out without it.

It also maybe tries to explain the rage of the Bruce Willis character but it's a bit of a lost cause. He's pretty smart but he gets consumed by the rage and I get that because you showed me his whole life, but he's hardly deep set into that rage. It's not implied fully well how the rage can blind him like that and while it opens up a solution, but it's not a clean kill. Then there's the whole random sex thing between Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt which doesn't add anything to the plot. I'm actually not for this whole subplot that comes in the last third (as well as Bruce Willis going berserk). It's actually a bit tacky and slightly forced, and I really don't know why they thought of slipping this in. It is different and pretty surprising than if, for example, they set it up like Heat, but I want to believe that they could have gone another way without being too much of a swipe at you.

I actually don't think the TK portion is actually important. Only a dumb person would not have deduced that the kid is the kid. That tantrum sealed it (I was entertaining the thought that it was Noah Segan) and if he was just a confused, powerless kid it would have held the tension and moral problem so much higher.

It's a difficulty with these movies. This is a bit darker and a bit trippier, but there's a reason most from the stock try to keep it straight; it's a bit tricky to knock down flourish. You have to try harder and you can fall lower.

So I'm thinking, if I were rich and I wanted to produce movies, how would I choose? As I've said, I have the impression that these small budget films if inventive enough and with branded actors, could work as snacks. They don't fill you up, but they're not hard to cook up; they aren't too novel that it might upset your stomach. They're safe bets that you would actually watch. But if I were a director or a writer, how do I play it up. I can't go full retard, but where is the threshold that you say that this is risky enough to win and this looks much morel like an afterthought to seem original.

I don't have an answer, but this is closer to the latter than the former.

(Looper - Rian Johnson)