Looper is a solid and intense science fiction film with equal parts action and mind bending plot; just the way a good science fiction film should be. In the year 2074, because of technology, it is extremely difficult for the mob to get away with killing people. The solution is to send a mark 30 years into the past where a hit man is waiting. Clean and efficient with no traceable evidence. Of course the mob hates loose ends, so they ‘close the loop’ by eventually sending the hit man back in time where their earlier selves kill them. Since the marks are hooded, the hit men never know it’s their future selves they are killing until they see the big gold payout attached to the body. The hit men know that their services are no longer required and they will have 30 years to enjoy their wealth until the mob sends them back to be murdered by themselves. Sounds complicated? It is.
We are introduced to Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who lives a fairly successful life of a mob hitman. He is professional and dispassionate in his killing assignments and at night he lives a life of fast cars, night clubs, and drug addiction. All is going as well as expected until one of his marks arrives from the future without a hood. Joe recognizes the mark as his older self. Old Joe (Bruce Willis) uses young Joe’s hesitation to escape. Fearing time paradoxes and mob retribution, Joe scrambles to find his older self in order to kill him. I’ve probably lost most of the readers at this point, but for sci-fi lovers, this is as cool as it gets.
Abe (a haggard Jeff Daniels) is the mob boss during young Joe’s time, who has been sent from the future to oversee the Looper program. He considers his assignment to be slumming it in the past. Once he realizes the entire program is in jeopardy by the escape of old Joe, he turns the pressure on young Joe in heavy mob fashion. Everyone is out to get old Joe including young Joe. The stakes have been raised as the amount of ‘closing the loop’ hits have dramatically increased due to someone in the future named ‘The Rainmaker’. This mysterious figure singlehandedly is wiping out the entire Looper program.
Through a series of accelerated flashbacks (or are they flashforwards), we see the arc of Joe’s life that leads to the point where he is sent unhooded into the past to face his younger self. We see that he has been redeemed by the love of woman (Quing Xu) and has transformed from a drug addicted mafia thug to a purposeful man who wishes to preserve the life he has made for himself. Of course this brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘your past catching up with you’ as he struggles to find a way out of his inevitable death by his own hand.
For two men who don’t look that much alike Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt are made up to be plausibly the same person at two different stages of their life. We sympathize with Old Joe as he appears to be a man redeemed, but when Old Joe starts to systematically track down children born on a certain date and kill them, we start to wonder who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. The young Joe who we revile is suddenly thrust into the role of protecting these kids for reasons even he doesn’t fully understand.
For two men who don’t look that much alike Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt are made up to be plausibly the same person at two different stages of their life. We sympathize with Old Joe as he appears to be a man redeemed, but when Old Joe starts to systematically track down children born on a certain date and kill them, we start to wonder who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. The young Joe who we revile is suddenly thrust into the role of protecting these kids for reasons even he doesn’t fully understand.
Young Joe eventually finds the pattern of Old Joe’s killing spree and locates the final intended victim on a farm. Suffering from injuries and drug withdraw, a young Joe is confronted with obvious suspicion from a woman named Sara who owns the farm (an enchanting Emily Blunt trying her best to channel an American redneck accent. I won’t say she failed as I definitely bought her being American, but there was something slightly off with the accent). Sara is fiercely protective of her young son, who Joe is convinced his older self is coming to kill. As Joe grows closer to the boy, he realizes the true scope of who and what the boy is and the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together.
Time travel movies are inherently flawed as changes in the past will affect the future in ways that we are not able to comprehend (aka The Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory or whatever you want to call it). This film tackles these complexities as well or better than any film I have seen. Joseph Gordon-Levitt solidifies himself in my estimation of being one of the best actors of the new generation of actors coming forward. Not only does he capture a mob persona realistically, but he is able to mimic Bruce Willis, a man he looks nothing alike, well enough to suspend our disbelief. If he is not A-list yet he soon will be.
This is just a good science fiction movie through and through. It probably won’t win any awards, but Sci-fi geeks will have a great time and spend days trying to unravel paradoxical events with their other geek friends at the next Star trek convention.
I give this film *** 1/2 stars (really enjoyed it)
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