Looper (2012)

Director: Rian Johnson

Release Date: 28 September, 2012

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

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Looper is... Hard to describe. Its a very interesting take on the very tired time travel genre. Even if you get a gist of its premise from the trailers and description; the plot manages to surprise on more than one occasion. It isn't a time travel movie, but more a movie about the what happens when time travel exists. If that makes any sense. 

Much, much more sense than this. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Joe, a looper. Loopers are special assassins hired by the mob to eliminate targets without leaving a trace. You see, the mob has access to illegal time travel devices in the future. When they want to wipe someone out, the victim sent back in time, bound and with a hood obscuring their face, where a waiting looper executes them and destroys the body. They're paid very handsomely for this morbid task. The only catch is that, eventually, they'll have to "close their loop". They must execute their future self to eliminate any evidence of time travel being used. The reward is a huge payout and 30 years to live as they wish. 

Of course, it doesn't go as planned. Joe becomes increasingly concerned as many of his fellow loopers are retired. Rumors go around that the mobsters in the future are planning on getting rid of all of the loopers. Eventually, Joe is brought face to face with future Joe (Bruce Willis). For some reason future Joe isn't bound or hooded, and quickly over powers young Joe. He escapes, intending to kill a future murderous gang leader only known as "The Rainmaker" while he is a child. Young Joe must hunt his future self down or become a target of the mob himself. 

Heres where the plot could have become very cliche. I was expecting future Joe and young Joe to eventually team up together to take down the gang. But that never happens. There's no "good"or "bad" Joe either. They both have an end goal they wish to achieve  and are willing to go to any means to get it. This leads to a showdown that completely caught me off guard (in a good way). 

Plot and story aside, Looper comes together pretty slickly. The future world has a very dirty "tech noir" feel to it that harkons to films like Blade Runner. Looper is fairly violent, but doesn't revel in the violence. It would have been easy for them to erase the blood, half second of visible breasts,  and a handful of F-bombs to get a PG-13 rating. But the mature and complex themes remain, which I don't think would appeal to a PG-13 audience. The film looks great, with some pretty impressive action sequences. They're not grand in scale where everything explodes leaving half of the world scorched. The set pieces are smaller, but the action is more tense because you actually care about the characters and their world.

"Yes, I know pages 37-90 are blank. Thats where all the CGI robots and fake boobs go."

The characters and actors are great. Willis and Godon-Levitt make a great pair and their chemistry with each other is great. Pierce Gagnon has a role as a youngster that puts most of the grown up actors in this movie to shame. He plays a character that is too spoiler-y for me to talk about here, but the performance deserves serious recognition. 

There is some silly makeup that Gordon-Levitt wears to make him look more like a younger version of Willis that looks pretty awful from some angles. It is something the film could have totally left out and it wouldn't have made a difference. The film ignores the time travel paradoxes that could potentially bog it down, which keeps it somewhat not confusing. That being said, the plot may be had for some to follow.

Bottom Line: 9/10- Looper is a surprisingly entertaining sci-fi film. It is a shining example of what sci fi should be. Introduce an amazing technology and ask a simple "what if?" question. Looper isn't about shoving as much shiny computer generated future on the screen as possible. Looper is about how the world can shape a person. Its about how even one person can become two completely different people, willing to go to completely different means to get what they want.