“Looper” presents us with two future settings separated by thirty years. In 2074, time travel has been invented. Although it has been declared highly illegal, it is available on the black market, used by the mafia as a means of taking out the trash. When a troublesome character needs “taken care of,” the mob simply zaps the target back to 2044, where an assassin — known as a Looper — stands holding a blunderbuss gun, waiting to blow a hole through the target’s chest. Strapped to the target’s back is payment in silver bars. The body is disposed of and, in a sense, it is almost as if it never existed.
Our hero, Joe, is a Looper living the high life in 2040s Kansas City. When not annihilating men who manifest out of thin air, Joe is partying with fellow Loopers, hanging with a kindly showgirl (Piper Perabo, “Coyote Ugly”), drowning his eyeballs in recreational drugs and learning French. He saves up silver bars hidden away underneath the floorboards of his swanky apartment, seemingly unknown to mob boss Abe (Jeff Daniels, scruffy but charismatic), to be used when he makes his planned move to France. Joe is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one of the stars of “Inception.” With that and the recently released “Premium Rush,” Gordon-Levitt is fast becoming one of America’s most reliable action heroes.
They’re called Loopers for a reason — when the mob decide to end a Looper’s contract, they kidnap the Looper, drag them into a time machine and zap them back to their younger self for assassination. This is called “closing the loop," and it’s something every Looper knows will happen to them one day. This is where things get messy. Normally, targets arrive with a sack over their head, so as to make certain that the Looper does not know when they are facing — and murdering — their future self. One day, a target arrives with no sack. Joe hesitates, looks into the target’s eyes and recognises them — they are his very own olive greens.
Old Joe, grizzled and balding, is played by Bruce Willis, who previously traveled through time in Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys." Willis’ facial features have been plastered onto Gordon-Levitt’s face in a three-hour appliance of make-up and prosthetics — consequently, Gordon-Levitt resembles a resident of the Madame Tussauds wax museum, while Willis looks like plain ol’ Brucie. Upon arrival in ‘44, Old Joe swiftly evades assassination and goes on the run, which — as we see in an early, integral sequence involving Paul Dano — is a very bad situation for Young Joe to be in.
With this development, “Looper” turns into a man-on-the-run chase movie, albeit one in which the man on the run is chasing himself. Johnson proves a gifted director of action as well as actors, fuelling the more visceral, high-octane scenes with a raw imagination that flows through both the compositions and the camerawork. The action is exciting: an attack on Abe’s base of operations makes for an eye-popping set-piece, as does a risky drop-by to Joe’s raided apartment, which, thanks to the time travel element, we get to visit twice from the perspective of both Joes.
Important to the story is crop farmer Sara (Emily Blunt, “The Adjustment Bureau”), fiercely independent and handy with a shotgun, and even more important is her young son, Cid (a promising Pierce Gagnon), for reasons I will not even hint at. It is at their rural Kansas farm house that “Looper” veers off in an unexpected direction, transforming into something more profound than most will anticipate, but I wouldn’t dare divulge the details — I don’t want to spoil the succulent surprises that “Looper” has in store.
Gordon-Levitt and Willis convince as two versions of the same person, the former a selfish Joe and the latter ostensibly wiser. In one breathtaking, decades-spanning sequence, we witness Young Joe transform into Old Joe, as he travels to Shanghai, guns down mob rivals, loses his hair and falls in love. In another scene, the two sit opposite each other in a country diner, staring each other out. “Your face looks backwards," quips Young Joe. Johnson’s script deliberately skips the philosophical implications of their conversation and smartly sidesteps talk of paradoxes. “If we talk about time travel shit then we're gonna be here all day, drawing diagrams with straws,” barks Old Joe.
Johnson introduces and toys with ideas new to the time travel sub-genre, doing so with giddy invention. For example, Young Joe’s actions have a direct impact on Old Joe’s memories, which become clearer or foggier, depending on their increasing or decreasing likelihood. Bodily changes made to Young Joe — such as scars and other permanent injuries — are instantly passed on to Old Joe, healed over the years. This implies that both Joes are of the same timeline, which inspires plenty of head-scratching in hindsight, but much of the film is moving at such a ferociously rapid pace that there is little time for us to think, analyse or be bothered in the moment.
We are given a lengthy breather upon reaching the farm house owned by Sara, where the action (mostly) comes to a halt as Johnson takes time to focus on his characters, about whom he is relatively ambiguous. As a strong female character, Blunt is not patronised, at no point treated as eye candy, introduced as she skilfully hacks a wooden stump to pieces with an axe and is later seen bravely fending off invading vagrants with a shotgun in order to protect her beloved boy. Scenes in her home build to a lively, extravagant climax laced with special effects and tearful drama. It is here that the plot reaches a surprisingly satisfying conclusion, every narrative strand slyly tied up in a neat, albeit possibly paradoxical bow.
“Looper” is Johnson’s third film, arriving after noirish high-school indie hit “Brick,” in which Gordon-Levitt was the star, and crime caper ensemble piece “The Brothers Bloom,” in which Gordon-Levitt had a bit-part. This is the writer-director’s biggest production so far, and his most ambitious: not just a multi-circuited blockbuster spectacle, it’s one with a third act that wanders down a few dark corridors most films of the sort wouldn’t dare approach. This is an intelligent, pulpy, tremendously entertaining science-fiction story from one of America’s most gifted up-and-coming directors — in Johnson, we may have a new Nolan.
10/10
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