Looper

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Rian Johnson

September 28, 2012

The year is 2044, and although time travel hasn’t been invented yet, its effects are being felt. Thirty years later it will be discovered and outlawed, however, criminal syndicates will use time travel to dispose of enemies. Sending them back in time, a hired hitman called a “Looper” waits until the condemned materializes out of thin air before shooting, upon which they properly dispose of the body. The job pays in silver bars, however, to keep the silence of the practice, the Loopers are sent back occasionally where they are eliminated by their past self: this is known as “closing the loop.” It’s rewarded with a golden payday but also limits their happiness knowing that in 30 years they will be killed, as Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) admits, it doesn’t “exactly attract the most forward-thinking people.” Joe is the youngest Looper and hopes to get out and retire before his loop closes, but the people in the future have other plans, and so does his future self…

While supporting actors Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt are uniformly impressive, this is definitely a Joseph Gordon-Levitt film. Although he had to work with prosthetics and heavy makeup, he still shines, properly exuding confidence and eliciting sympathy despite making behavioral choices that aren’t exactly sympathetic. Bruce Willis was not an intelligent choice visually to represent Gordon-Levitt 30 years in the future, however, Gordon-Levitt still matches with his older counterpart whilst acting as a proper guide through the confusing timelines and implausible future.

What makes “Looper” different from other time-traveling sci-fi films is that so much nonsense is thrown at you that before you can attempt to question one phenomenon, you’ve already been hit with three more. For example, two timelines are introduced into the film yet the main character believes in only one, which get’s tricky to unravel when they are narrating the film. Of course, time travel hasn’t been invented yet in our world, and probably won’t be in thirty years either, which means in time travel movies we have no right to justify what is right and what is wrong. However as long as the film sticks to its own rules of logic, it won’t lose the viewer, “Looper” has trouble with this. Regardless, the acting, film production, and confusing plot still come together to make one of the best sci-fi films of the decade. But odds are if you understood the film the first time around, you probably didn’t leave time to properly enjoy it. So don’t make that mistake.

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