In the year 2074, time travel has been invented but is outlawed, only used by the mob to send their targets back 30 years into the past for a specialised assassin known as a ‘looper’ to dispose of them. A looper’s job is easy: wait for the target to arrive hooded and shackled, kill him and dispose of the body, leaving it untraceable in either time period. The only rule is never let your target run, even if the target is yourself as part of a process to terminate a looper’s contract, known as ‘closing the loop’.
It’s an intriguing set up for Looper, writer-director Rian Johnson’s third film. Broadening his scope in a big way from his sensational high-school-noir debut Brick and uneven caper flick The Brothers Bloom, Johnson mixes sci-fi, noir, western and even anime elements into a time travel thrill ride that is gripping from the opening moments to the very last.
The film follows the arc of Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a looper content to do the deed, grab some steak and eggs and meet up with his looper buddies to hit some seedy strip clubs. Joe is saving half of his loot and learning French in preparation for the closure of his loop.
But when the time comes to close his loop, Joe is surprised to find his future-self (Bruce Willis) arrive hoodless, unshackled and packing his own agenda, looking to avenge the heartbreak he’s suffered at the hands of the mysterious criminal overlord of the future known as The Rainmaker.
To reveal any more of the plot, particularly events that take place once Joe winds up hiding out on a farm owned by protective mother Sara (Emily Blunt), would spoil some massive surprises that have remarkably remained untainted by trailers and marketing. The way the plot turns in the second half of the movie is astounding and raises an already bold and intriguing film to another level.
Looper is a film of big ideas and grand ambition and Johnson is mostly successful in channelling all of these concepts in a way that sits alongside the likes of Twelve Monkeys and The Terminator at the top of this particular genre. As Jeff Daniels’ cynical mob boss points out “This time travel crap can fry your brain like an egg” but Johnson avoids delving too deep into Primer-esque details and diagrams, instead sticking to the broader logic that most audiences are familiar with. For example, carving something in your arm will leave a scar for your future self, something that Johnson establishes with an eerie scene of disappearing body parts early in the film.
Johnson’s plot may not be entirely watertight and will no doubt be dissected by the usual nitpickers, when a film is as well crafted as Looper, it’s easy to accept the paradoxes.
Crucial to this is the well-rounded characters and the fantastic performances from the three primary actors that bring plenty of emotional heft to the twisting time-travel plot. Emily Blunt flourishes in one of the best dramatic roles of her career and Bruce Willis gives a welcome reminder of just how good he can be in the right material, bringing the quiet sadness that he brought to roles in The Sixth Sense or Twelve Monkeys.
Given the hardest role, Joseph Gordon-Levitt shines. Aided by prosthetics to help him resemble a young Bruce Willis, Gordon-Levitt also matches the actor’s body language and raspy voice, particularly in the hardboiled narration, making it credible that the two could be the same person.
With only his third feature, Johnson has marked himself as a talent of Christopher Nolan proportions, making one of the best modern sci-fi films and certainly one of the best films of 2012. A sharp and thrilling time-travel noir that also packs plenty of human drama and deals with themes as weighty as nature-vs-nurture and redemption while asking big questions that could provoke endless discussion, Looper is undoubtedly a film to be seen again and again.
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