Worst boozy movie ever

Directed by Rian Johnson
Starring Bruce Willis, JGL, Emily Blunt, Bruce Willis, Jeff Daniels, Pierce Gagnon, Bruce Willis, Piper Perabo, and Bruce Willis

***
Minor spoiler alert: I will discuss a few plot points of the film that you probably could have guessed would be in there if you’ve read anything about it. However, if you wish your slate to remain completely blank you should probably skip this review.

I also spoil Signs but whatever.

****

Despite sporting a huge (intermittent) boner for this film over the past 3-4 months, I have to say Looper is just about the worst boozy movie I’ve ever watched.

It is not meritless as a film. It does have redeeming qualities, but sadly only one of them makes the film any easier to bear when you’ve been drinking. (I will discuss this redemption later)

Having read and heard only positive things about Looper, I went in totally psyched. I equipped myself with a cold bag, some ice, lemon slices, and a bottle of Bruce Willis vodka, entering the movie theatre with a healthy strut in my step. Also, can I say that by owning his own vodka, a firearms arsenal, schtupping Demi Moore (in the 1980s and 90s!), exclusively dating lingerie models since his divorce, and grossing over $3 billion in North America alone Bruce Willis is officially the biggest baller in the history of the universe. Seriously, Jay-Z could take fuckin lessons from this guy. 

And then some.

Right, the movie. The movie starts with some voiceover exposition/explanation about how time-travel is invented in the late 21st century and immediately outlawed, relegated to shady, clandestine use by only the largest criminal organisations. When they need to carry out a hit, they whisk a bound, hooded victim back 30 years. A specialised assassin (or “looper”) executes them and disposes of the body the moment they materialise in the past. To eliminate all traces of these hits, loopers are sooner or later forced to unknowingly execute their future selves, who are sent back through time along with a large sum of gold to usher in the looper’s retirement.

This system, of course, makes zero sense, since it would be miles easier to zap people back to the 1870s when a) gold had more value; and b) all your hitmen would die of natural causes over two centuries before they posed a threat to your criminal organisation. Or, shit, better yet transport them back a few hundred thousand years because I don’t care how tough JGL is, he’s not as badass as this fuckin guy.

And if you outrun him you're still Cretaceously fucked.

 

But by this point I’m already drunk so whatever. Bruce Willis shows up as JGL's future self, only unmasked. JGL recognises the man in front of him, hesitates, and before he knows it Bruce gets the upper hand (becasue OF COURSE HE DOES), escapes, and the mob is after them both.

I go along with things because Jeff Daniels makes a lot of his small role, JGL is a strong leading man, and Piper Perabo takes her gear off in this movie, which held my motivation to watch for at least another 20 minutes. There’s some time-travel intrigue, a few cool action set pieces wherein Bruce Willis ruins everyone’s shit, and then Looper proceeds to suck huge amounts of camel dick for a full hour-and-a-half.

The narrative of this film arcs in such a way that it kills all momentum about halfway through. Looper just slows down to a crawl. There’s about 30 minutes of movie in there that doesn’t need to exist, followed by the most anti-climactic ending since Signs. (Seriously, Night. Water is the second most abundant molecule in the universe; what the fuck were you thinking?)

It also turns into a kid’s movie. Although he’s nowhere in any of the trailers, this goddamn kid shows up out of the blue and gives the movie a totally new slant.

Of course, proponents of the films are all hysterical like “This Pierce Gagnon kid is a revelation! Breakthrough performance of the year!” but seriously those people can go suck an egg. I didn’t sign up for this. The title card says Looper, not The Mighty Ducks. I bring the vodka, Bruce brings the pwnage. That’s been the covenant for three decades running and it’s worked out just fine. Plus this kid spends half of his screen time being a shrill asshole, which may have threatened to upset my drunk if, of course, I remembered anything about seeing this movie.

Well, okay, I do remember one thing about the movie, and only because it’s the film’s only redeeming quality. It’s almost as if Rian Johnson realised towards the end of shooting “Hold on just a second… this movie sucks camel dick.” and so he tried to alleviate the camel dick-sucking by throwing in a superfluous but nut-bustingly awesome scene of Bruce Willis going around a building killing everything that isn’t Bruce Willis.

Having drank over half a bottle of Bruce Willis vodka at this point, my natural inclination was to fully embrace The Stupid, yelling “YEEEAAAHHH!! BRUCE WILLIISSSSSS!”at full volume, then repeating this every time he killed another volley of guys (in case people in the next theatre had not figured out how much I love Bruce Willis). 

But yeah no amount of Bruce Willis vodka or Bruce Willis love can save this movie.

Boozy rating: 1/10

Damage: 9/10 (pre-movie: 70 ml Stolichnaya Elit vodka; during: 350-400 ml Bruce Willis vodka)

Next week: Taken 2

Getting ready for Looper

When I say this cat Rian Johnson is probably the best director and auteur of his generation, y’all best listen up. Not only are his screenplays taut, imaginative, colourful, and home to marvellous characters, they are also the ballsiest in the business. Gumshoe film-noir set in high school? No problem. Meta-con-men movie about con-men movies? Check me out, haters. Rian Johnson has a Santa Claus-sized bag full of fuck yous and Rian Johnson chucks them at the studios whenever Rian Johnson feels like it.

Kinda looks like he does too, eh?

 

As most geniuses, he will be forever underfunded and his work unappreciated until late in or after his life. Unlike the Michael Bays and Stephen Sommers’ of the film world, who seem to think that if you put enough loud noises and fast-moving things in a movie the audience will be transfixed and happy, Rian holds firm the idea that people are smart and narrative complexity is not beyond the layman.

It took a while for that point to be driven home. It was a few years after he started making his fantastic (but highly unprofitable) films that a flick called Inception started opening doors. It’s a high-concept piece that is as challenging as it is thrilling, not to mention it’s 150 minutes long, doesn’t offer spoon-fed answers, and grossed $820 million dollars. It is a landmark film and iron-clad proof that high-concept and high revenue are not mutually exclusive. Because up until then, let’s face it, how many high-grossing, non-franchise sci-fi films can you think of? I had to check Wikipedia to see if 2001 turned a profit at the box office (it did).

Probably in no small part thanks to Inception’s success, Endgame Entertainment (backed by Sony) gave Rian $30 mil to do Looper, a picture that serves the dual purpose of:

• Giving 60-year-old Bruce Willis all the reason he needs to own everything in the known universe; and
• Being the best sci-fi flick this side of the 21^st century.

I haven’t even seen it, yet I’m comfortable saying this based on early critiques and the fact that Rian Johnson’s genius can only be measured on the same scale as things like the cosmos and Liam Neeson’s cock.

In preparation for my Looper viewing this week, I am loading up on Rian Johnson back-catalogue and key Bruce Willis pictures, since Bruce Willis is a force of nature in his own right. I saw a JGL interview recently where the young actor asks how many stars with Bruce’s action credentials have also been in as many historically important and critically acclaimed films. It’s an important point.

12 Monkeys (dir. Terry Gilliam, 1995)

The first instalment in Bruce Willis’ time travel sci-fi canon. Civilisation has been forced underground by the proliferation of a deadly virus that has also wiped out most of humanity. Bruce Willis is sent back through time to investigate a late 20^th century terrorist organisation suspected to have been involved in its dispersal.

This is an important movie because it solidified Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis as eminently competent actors to a mass audience, it is Terry Gilliam’s most commercially successful picture, and it is one of those rare films that can either be involving sci-fi divertissement or a conceptually profound affair. The same person can watch this movie with their brain switched on or off and enjoy it on completely separate, yet overlapping, sets of merits. All in a day’s work…

Unbreakable (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)

Anyone who derides M. Night Shyamalan as a filmmaker needs to watch Unbreakable and go fuck themselves, in that order. As retarded as some of his films are, Unbreakable is unshakable testimony that he absolutely knows what he’s doing as a writer/director. Whereas The Sixth Sense just sorta didn’t work as horror or suspense, Unbreakable is an intentional subversion of the superhero genre and, in this light, a modern masterpiece.

The film is born of the simple, yet clever, question: “What if Superman lived among us, only he didn’t know he was Superman?” Bruce Willis plays anti-hero David Dunn, who, in addition to being reluctant about his alleged superpowers, is really just a shit person. He is a failed athlete, works a go-nowhere job, has a collapsing marriage, and his attitude towards parenting is “autopilot.” Even his name sucks. Bruce Willis pulls off two colossal feats in this movie, creating a superhero who is not larger-than-life (to be more accurate, the guy is a totally listless deadbeat) AND making you like the fucking guy.

Night’s direction is assured, his narrative captivating, and Bruce Willis delivers a superb performance, not in the Daniel Day Lewis hot-shit method kind of way but in that you struggle to think of any actor (living or dead) who could have done that role better. Sammy J shows up as the portentous comic book collector Elijah Prince, who strives to convince a dubious Bruce that his superpowers are for real. Robin Wright Penn gives yet another solid performance to which no one paid attention. And hey, did anyone else notice that the moment she married Sean she stopped getting good roles and immediately following their divorce she was in three of the most critically acclaimed films of that year? Just sayin. Don’t let the man bring you down, sister.

In a way, Night was a victim of his own success. The Sixth Sense was too huge a cultural phenomenon for anyone to take Unbreakable at face value. It’s a true shame, since it is both Night’s best film (by FAR) and probably the second best superhero movie ever made (after The Dark Knight).

Brick (dir. Rian Johnson, 2006)

Film-noir set in a small-town, Northern California high school, this movie will just blow your mind. JGL plays a would-be Sam Spade character investigating the disappearance of his troubled ex-girlfriend Emily (played by the heavenly Emilie de Ravin). His ensuing travails evoke the nastiness of navigating high school social strata, if all your classmates were involved in drug dealing, intimidation, and murder.

Rian Johnson’s vision here is, in the truest sense of the word, singular. A movie like this could not have been made by anyone else, nor will it ever. You could make a sound argument for this movie launching JGL’s career (as an adult) and it established Rian as the next “holy shit, who is this guy?!” Its film-noir aesthetic is expertly delivered, its characterisations vivid, the script gripping and above all just really damn smart.

Brick is a refreshing, energetic, bold piece of filmmaking, made even more impressive by the fact that it was produced for under a half-million dollars. A tremendous accomplishment on every level.

The Fifth Element (dir. Luc Besson, 1997)

Luc Besson may have one of the oddest careers of any filmmaker I can think of, and Fifth Element is probably one of the oddest films in it. This is apocalyptic sci-fi turned up to 11 all the way through, featuring a bleach-blonde Bruce Willis, a young, HOT Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman chewing scenery as only Gary Oldman can, the most impressive production design of perhaps any movie since Ben-Hur, and Chris Tucker committing 100% to the most ludicrous, batshit insane performance in the history of film.

The plot is there is no plot. Bruce Willis must save the Earth from destruction by huge ominous black planetoid orb thingy. The whole thing is just a pretence for creating an overblown, balls-to-the-walls, visually staggering sci-fi epic that also happens to be truckloads of fun. Hating The Fifth Element is tantamount to hating fun. This movie goes out of its way to please everybody. Huge goofy bad guys that look like Yoda on steroids. Chris Tucker’s absurd hairdos and outfits. Chris Tucker’s absurd everything. Plenty of explosions. Gary Oldman’s character is called “Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg.” Mathieu Kassovitz in a hysterical cameo. The President of the Universe being played by Tiny Lister (because, honestly, who else could the President of the Universe be?).

Except maybe this guy

Fifth Element also contains some of the greatest non-Die Hard moments of Bruce Willis pwnage ever committed to film. He doesn’t even rack up that high a body count, it’s mainly that he dispatches baddies with such delectable nonchalance. Whereas John McClane was a hyper-competent cop who, albeit reluctantly, made monumental efforts to save people while still  cracking wise and being a general hardass, Bruce portrays Corben Dallas as someone who could give less than two shits. His delivery of every line is soaked in overtones of “I don’t want to be here. Please stop talking to me. I just want to go home to my shitty apartment and hang out with my retarded cat.” He is the antithesis of everyone else in this film, who is so goddamn excited about everything, and, as such, fucking rules house.

 
The Fifth Element is this gigantic, bombastic filmic entity that, miraculously for a film that clearly demanded a shit-ton of work and money, knows how not to take itself seriously at all. It is an ode to sci-fi fantasy, crafted by a geek who spent his childhood daydreaming for other geeks who spent their childhoods daydreaming.  You just get swept up by it.

Planet Terror (dir. Robert Rodriguez, 2007)

Step 1: Get drunk with 2-3 close friends.

Step 2: Put the Planet Terror DVD in the DVD tray.

Step 3: Press the “Play” button.

Step 4: Magic.

Next week: Looper

Looper is in theatres now. Go see it like your friend Ben.