2012: The Year in Film "Looper" Review

Rian Johnson is one of the more intriguing and exciting young American filmmakers working today. His two previous flicks, "Brick" (a smart, stylized updating of the classic Noir tale in a modern American high school - and vastly underrated) and "The Brothers Bloom" (a fun, occasionally hilarious caper) are both new twists/perspectives on classic and often tired genres, and show an imagination and eye for both story and filmmaking that make Mr. Johnson's career one well worth following. Oh, and there's the fact that he's directed two of the stronger episodes of "Breaking Bad", season three's "Fly" (a serious achievement in directing) and season five's "51". Now comes feature flick number three, "Looper".

 In the not-so-distant future, time travel has been invented but is highly illegal due to the potential timeline effects and as a result is used exclusively by the world's largest criminal organizations to eliminate people in the past, as murder is all but impossible in 2072. In the film's present, 2042, assassins called "Loopers" are employed to handle the job of eliminating these targets. This film's vision of the future seems to indicate that the next 30 years will not be kind to the US of A or the greater world. Homelessness is rampant, vagrants roam the streets, and a violent lawlessness has taken over the major cities. Loopers arrive at a set time and place, kill the hooded individual as he or she arrives, take their payment from the person of their victim, dispose of the body, and go about their day. It's a pretty clean and efficient system, largely untraceable... the only issue is the loopers themselves. At some point, the future organizations will "close the loop", by sending the future self of the assassin through time, the assassin will unbeknownst to himself, kill his future self, take his resulting large payday, and enjoy the next 30 years of his life.  Loopers enjoy a pretty easy life in this future dystopia, with steady and good pay (a few years of "Looping" pays enough for a lifetime of relative leisure), few responsibilities, and steady access to drugs, parties and women.  A looper's only concern is ensuring that his target meet his intended demise, as letting a target escape is simply unacceptable, with potentially devastating consequences.

Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt - "wearing" a CGI-ed face to make him resemble the older version of himself, played by Bruce Willis) is one such Looper.  He enjoys life in the city and is quietly stashing away half of his pay, hoping to move to Paris after his time as a looper is up.  All of his dedication and plans are waylaid when, through the unusual circumstance of his target arriving without a hood, he hesitates and allows the older version of himself to escape.  A manhunt ensues, and Joe finds himself in a race against the clock and his employer to hunt down himself.



"Looper" is smart, very smart, and expertly done.  The plot crackles, the performances shine, and via narrative techniques like flashbacks (flashforwards?) we are shown the stakes and the film's vision of the fluid nature of time.  You will never be able to make traveling time make sense, so it's best to just establish your rules and run with them.  Looper does this, and so escapes most of the headier discussions of time travel that are guaranteed to: 1. make your head spin, 2. descend into nonsense, and 3. sound like an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" where you're just making up pseudo technical sounding nonsense.  Note: Looper isn't able to do this completely, but what it IS able to do is completely switch directions completely midstream without hitting a hiccup and effectively create a whole new and parallel narrative that exists alongside the main narrative but is largely separate.  Basically, Looper is two movies, 1/2 crime/caper/gangland thriller and 1/2 redemption/family/relationship story and 99% of flicks would fail when trying to pull something like this off, but somehow Looper does it largely seamlessly and effectively.  This is a serious achievement.  Characters have distinct development and motivations.  Joe and Joe (JGL and Bruce Willis) share enough besides the CGI-ed face that confrontations between them are fascinating, with a young man's headstrong foolishness butting up against his older counterpart's wisdom and know-how.

The good: the performances.  Joseph Gordon Levitt is one of the finer young actors working today, even if he did try WAY too hard throughout his SNL hosting gig.  Bruce Willis is a pro and could play this role in his sleep.  Emily Blunt, who I've always thought had a tendency to sort of drift through her roles as scenery, really owns this one, and she'll grow on you.  Jeff Daniels has a lot of fun with what could have been a stock part.  The plot is smart and seamless and has very few holes... something that you can't often say about flicks featuring time travel.  There are some characters that exist merely to further the plot, but there are worse sins a movie can commit, Chris Nolan has been doing that trick for years.  What starts as a dystopian action-er turns into a character piece, and this flick is worth seeing for that alone.  It's shot spectacularly, makes great use of its characters, will have you at the end of your seat at times, and really uses its time travel elements pretty ingeniously.  I liked this one a lot.

The bad: as I said, any discussion about time travel bears the risk of crossing over into silliness, and this flick comes close a couple of times without ever crossing over into straight silliness.  As I said, some characters have no point except as a plot device and that can feel cheap.  I personally would have wanted the future to be MORE fleshed out, but I'm a nerd for world-building like that.  It's why I love George RR Martin.  Really, there are few criticisms here.  This is one of the best movies of the year.

"Looper" is smart, it's tense, it's fun, but above all, it's very, very well done.  A must-see.  Worth multiple viewings.

9/10