Old Joe: Bruce Willis
Sara: Emily Blunt
Seth: Paul Dano
Kid Blue: Noah Segan
Suzie: Piper Perabo
Abe: Jeff Daniels
Cid: Pierce Gagnon
TriStar Pictures and
FilmDistrict present a film written and directed by Rian Johnson. Running time:
118 min. Rated R (for strong violence, language, some sexuality/nudity and drug
content).
“Looper” is an ingenious
science fiction thriller from filmmaker Rian Johnson. Writer/director Johnson
is a specialist in sublime cleverness. He nearly outsmarts his own screenplay
this time around as he did with his last effort “The Brothers Bloom”. His
brilliant debut film “Brick” remains the benchmark to which he’s trying to
return. However, if you just let “Looper” happen, it is a thrilling, twisting,
unexpected ride down the all too often familiar territory of time travel
science fiction. Johnson has turned that premise into something new here.
Like so many great science
fictions, “Looper” takes place in the not too distant future 2042. Time travel
has not been invented yet, but it will have been 30 years later. In the future,
time travel is quickly made illegal and only a powerful organized crime
syndicate retains the technology for any practical use. They employ assassins
from 2042 called loopers to kill victims who are sent back from 2072.
Joe is a looper, hand picked
by Abe, the mob liaison from the future. Joe is a company man; he does his job.
He understands that his final hit could possibly be his own future self. It’s
part of what he signed off on. Rumors are coming back from 2072 that a new
enforcer known as The Rainmaker is taking over power and closing out all the
loops by having all the loopers assassinate their future selves. Despite the
fact that Joe’s best friend Seth must pay a terrible price for failing to kill
his future self, Joe continues to toe the line until he comes face to face with
his future self and is taken by surprise.
Often when dealing with two
versions of the same character, filmmakers will chose to have the same actor
play both roles by employing age make up. Here it is the younger Joseph
Gordon-Levitt who wears the prosthetic make up to look more like Bruce Willis
as his older self. The two actors’ faces don’t look that much alike. Willis’
mug is very easy for audiences to recognize after thirty years of playing
action heroes. Levitt’s performance as a younger version of this iconic actor
is a case in close physical study. He mimics many of Willis’ very recognizable
facial expressions and physicalities. He never succumbs to the urge to force an
impression of Willis, however.
Willis, on the other hand,
takes on a strange version of that action hero he’s played all his life. He’s
not the hero here, Levitt is. The plot does a good job of not teaming the two
together. They both work toward the goal of preventing a terrible act from
being committed. Although it is the same act they try to prevent, they come at
it from completely different philosophies and don’t ever realize it. Young Joe
never stops towing the company line, and insists on successfully fulfilling his
promise to assassinate his future self. Old Joe is after another game
altogether. His mission is more personal than his younger self, who tries to
keep his actions business oriented. While Willis performs some of the same
actions as many of his heroic roles, his personal mission also sends him down a
much darker path.
Young Joe also finds himself
getting in touch with more personal feelings, which are new to him, when he
gets involved with a mother and son who live in isolation on a farm. He finds
he needs to protect these two from Abe’s goons who are chasing him, and from
his future self, who may be hunting the child. Emily Blunt plays the mother,
Sarah, as a tough cookie who seems to have left a very different life to raise
her child. Cid (Pierce Gagnon) is a kid with some surprising revelations that
prove to have a much grander impact on Joe’s life than he could ever realize.
Obviously, there are some
pretty major details to this plot that I’m choosing to avoid in order to
preserve the integrity of its secrets. The trick to pulling a movie like this
off, however, isn’t in what the details of the plot are but how they are
revealed and used throughout the running time of the movie. Most importantly,
Johnson keeps the plot moving at a fairly breakneck pace. The plot is never
confusing, but he moves it along at such a pace that the audience doesn’t
really get much of a chance to process any information they receive before it
is already in use.
Any time travel plot invites
second-guessing on behalf of the audience. Johnson tries to avoid some of this
with a scene between the two Joes that takes place in a diner. Old Joe explains
that they could sit there for days discussing the workings of time travel, but it
would be a waste of time because it isn’t the point. This speech is delivered
as much to the audience as it is to his younger self. He’s not lying. You could
run yourself around the mechanics of the movie’s plot for weeks, but then you’d
be missing the point.
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