At one point during the movie, my wife leaned over and whispered into my ear:
If you accept the premise that Time Travel exists and the only people who use it are the Mafia and the only thing they use it for is to dump bodies rather than go back and buy stocks then it was pretty good but like a lot of Time Travel plots, it makes no sense:
In the first go around, Joe gets his older self bagged like normal and kills him. Grows older, gets back into crime, meets his love and gets out of the business. Meanwhile the Rainmaker was taking over the Organized crime business. Old Joe loses his wife and goes back unbagged to kill the Rainmaker which is the timeline the majority of the movie plays out in. In the end, we find Old Joe created the Rainmaker in the first place but Young Joe stops it.
Here’s the problem: Old Joe was dead. How could he have created the Rainmaker when he was shot in a field the first time around?
I thought of that angle, but to me it doesn’t add up. Young Joe’s life should be pretty much linear until the point where he has aged into Old Joe and been sent back in time. But under this terry, he shoots his older self twice. Wouldn’t he notice that something was up?
See, to me this is part of the same problem as above. The whole plot is circular and rests upon itself. Almost everything has to both happen and not happen for the story to make any sense. I realize that’s meant to be deep and mind-bending and all, but it didn’t really work for me. I feel like other time-travel stories have dealt with the paradoxes better, even if some are inevitable.
It’s an allegory. You must stop being evil now to prevent damnation later, and by the way, now.
His life is linear. The narrative is nonlinear.
My wife and I are big fans of her show “Covert Affairs”. Gotta say, I was mystified that she was so unbusty. They must use a lot of push-up garment on the TV show.
Just got back, working my way through these comments. Tons of plotholes, if I got my timelines right… but will hold off till Im done here first.
For starters:
Is Joe == Cid or how ever you spell the toddler’s name? I kept thinking, if only Cid had met Professor Xavier…
So… Let me dump all of this out here. Organization doesn’t matter, especially in a time travel movie.
Bruce Willis Got his life in “full”. The assumption is he got his 30 years after closing the loop. Else, why else the countdown (Up?) in big letters? So at the time we see the count down to Year 30, a loop, if not THE loop, has been closed. Yes?
Except that Bruce Willis wants more…
Ok, and so he sets up a way to escape the closing in the cane field as was given by Gordon-Levitt’s “jobsite”. But, well, ok, I was expecting Paycheck or at the very least Memento at this point. Anyone else? It seems that we lost part of the movies premise here, that Joe didn’t go Paycheck on this. Am I that far off base?
Reduced for time, Willis gets the skills of a PI that anyone in the court system would die for, and comes up with three possible names.
And he gets it right on the FIRST try, even at that? Ok, so what was the “Oh Shit!” moment when Willis is snooping at those two appartments, and apparently got the address wrong, and the kid was being baby-sat next door. What was this all about?
How does that end up?
And then…
His Wife. … WTF with having his wife in there, for… What did she do again? Is this why we can’t hear dialogue? when we see her? Why then the Bird shot from her?
I kept trying to guess at the ending. I got it wrong. AND HOW.
First off
“Stupid little S**T”
There was one jump cut in the film, Willis says this of Levitt. Then you have the Mob Boss saying VERBATIM the same line to the butt monkey. … I can’t be the only one thinking that Willis became the Mob Boss guy from the future, can I ?
But the Butt Monkey has a few things to say too.
“All I ever wanted, was for you to tell me I did good.” … So does this somehow tie in to Cid / Rainmaker? Doesn’t Cid become the Butt-Monkey here? I mean, That was SOOOO the guess I had on this film.
At the ending
Joe kills literally everyone in the film, save his wife. Right?
Who’s timeline is it, at the end?
That is to say, Willis’ retirement life ““happened”” right? It is only because Willis escaped the cane field the first time, as would be victim, that Levitt learns to end the loop via suicide. Right?
Ok, so then, what about the News Brief…
There was Chinese CNN on the tv … air at one point via Willis’ wife. China TV, of course in english. They mention that the Rainmaker has … is controlling things.
But didn’t we already stop that from happening?
And what was up with the
Live / Real Time Scaring per Be at… and Beatrix occurance AND the reason why the guy Levitt gave up WASNT shot… What psycho surgery were they to do to him
Don’t we get an explanation on how that happens?
The Drugs
This entire arc was aborted. Willis said that the [asian] wife would save his life. But cid’s “mom” detoxed Levitt. … So much for running from the mob on being 30% … was it? … So what happened here? when was the habit kicked?
Are you posting drunk? Seriously, I don’t understand any of your questions. Who or what is a “butt monkey?” But I’ll try to see if I can figure some of it out
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No, Joe is not Cid.
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The movie shows two separate timelines, as alluded above. In the first one, young Joe closes the loop, killing old Joe. He then becomes old Joe and lives in China. When the mob comes and kills his wife, he fights back and then changes things, so this time when he goes back, young Joe doesn’t kill him.
Obviously the Joes can only experience one timeline at a time. We get to see both, because we are cool. The audience has the benefit of (some) omniscience that the characters don’t have.
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I don’t understand your reference to Paycheck.
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He has a list of three children born at a particular hospital on one day. He kills the first one. The second one turned out to be the son of Suzie (the stripper/prostitute that Young Joe likes and Old Joe remembers, played by Piper Parabo) so he changes his mind and doesn’t kill him. The third one is Cid.
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I don’t understand this question. Old Joe’s wife is Chinese. Young Joe gets birdshot by the very not-Chinese woman on the farm, Sarah, played by Emily Blunt.
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That wouldn’t make any sense. The mob guy from the future is Jeff Daniels and is a completely different guy.
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Is “butt monkey” the idiot gat man? If so, no that is not Cid. There’s no reason to think it would be. For one thing, Cid would not require a gun because he has super TK powers.
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Young Joe kills himself, meaning he never retires, never marries the Chinese girl, and never goes back in time to kill Sarah, and therefore Cid is never traumatized and, theoretically, never becomes the Rainmaker.
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The Chinese TV wasn’t in English, except for the word “Rainmaker.”
OK, seriously, what? I have an idea of what scenes you’re referencing, but have no idea what you’re asking here.
I was going to ask the same thing. My brain hurts after reading Meeko’s post.
“Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey” is now an earworm for me. It’s fun having a Dr. Who dialogue earworm. Thanks Alessan and Mrs. Alessan.
The only part of the movie that didn’t make sense to me was the first time Willis comes back.[spoiler] Young Joe fails to kill him, old Joe escapes. Young Joe goes back to his apartment, hoping to get his silver, but slips on the fire escape and falls to his death. This creates a paradox, because he dies specifically because of his old self, but if he dies, there is no old self to get him killed, so he shouldn’t die. The universe apparently resolves this paradox by snapping back to the moment when old Joe shows up, only this time, young Joe does the job, retires to Shanghai, etc. etc.
Okay, fine. So, when young Joe kills himself in the field, he’s only doing that because he’s trying to save the kid’s mom from his older self. But by killing himself, he ensures that there never will be an old Joe to threaten the kid’s mom, so there would be no reason to kill himself. In other words, it’s another paradox, just like the first one. So, why doesn’t he snap back, like hd did originally?[/spoiler]
Still loved the film, though.
I may have misinterpreted the scene, but I don’t think Young Joe dies when he falls off the fire escape. He just gets knocked out, giving Old Joe a chance to carry him off to safety.
So, when it cuts back to Joe in the cornfield, and he kills old Joe like he would anyone else sent back, that was what? A flashback from old Joe’s POV to what was “supposed” to happen, and not the same event “resetting” to avoid a paradox?
I can accept that.
Yeah. The audience gets to see both versions. Joe doesn’t.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and clears up most of my issues with the movie.
One thing I really liked about the end:
[spoiler]Joe didn’t need to kill himself. All he had to do was blow off his gun hand, and old Joe doesn’t have anything to shoot with. But Joe’s poor planning with regard to time travel was established in the dinner scene, when his older self points out that he could have used the other waitress’ shorter name to get a message to himself.
Also, when old Joe is describing the Rainmaker, he says there’s rumors that he has a synthetic jaw. When he takes a shot at Sid in the field, he grazes the kids cheek. I think the implication there is that, originally, his aim was a little more to the right, and he blew half the kid’s face off.[/spoiler]
The moment I saw this, the ‘reset’ I was like … Ah ok groundhog’s day has made an entrance.
NM