Review Detail

I have big issues with the logic in Looper in a number of areas, which I wrote all about in my general review of the film here: https://letterboxd.com/nottheacademy/film/looper/ However, there's a lot to like about it, including a lot of great deleted scenes. These do make the film longer than a sci-fi or action film should probably be, but they don't drag. The end effect is to emphasize the character building and drama in the film, particularly of "Joe" and the two women he's fixated on: young Joe with Suzie (the insanely hot Piper Perabo) and old Joe with his wife (the very sweet Xu Qing).

Many, but not all, of the deleted scenes are incorporated back into the film. The video quality was fine I thought, as the most of the film looks pretty gray and washed-out anyway. Not a jarring difference in the deleted scenes. The audio jumps around in levels though, with I think some added/moved music sometimes making dialogue hard to hear, and audio levels in general being sometimes distractingly unbalanced. Too much up and down too close together. This is all fairly inconsequential though, the big issue I have is in the deleted material. There is a short, key scene missing which justifies two deleted subplots. (SPOILERS for the film...)

...Several deleted scenes expand on Joe's relationship with the dancer/hooker Suzie and seed the idea that he knows about her child and leaves money for her. A couple other scenes show old Joe trying to find the resolve to track down and kill the three kids who could potentially be "the Rainmaker". This comes to a head when old Joe realizes that Suzie's kid is one of them and remembers her. He tries to avoid it, and even thinks about his wife and what she would think of him, before eventually deciding it's worth becoming a horrible person to save his wife. He goes in to Suzie's house and talks to her before doing the deed. Only parts of this sequence are included, not the whole thing, and it's the culmination of most of the deleted scenes. For me, that alone means this is a "pass". Either all those bits should be included, or none of the scenes. Currently, they show character but have no real pay off.

There are a couple other unrelated scenes... one involving actor Garret Dillahunt at the farmhouse, which is a nice, "fun" addition. Some more bits with Kid Blue, building his side adventure. One of his scenes is quite long and would probably make the pace drag, so it's not included, but I think it could've been edited down and inserted to help show him as a more resourceful character and a real threat. There's also a missing scene in the future between old Joe and his wife. Much of it is in Chinese and it feels more included to appease the Chinese financiers than because it helped the story, so that's probably a good omission. All in all, this is a promising edit if you like the movie, but I feel it needs a version 2.o.