Looper
The
clock is ticking…
As
precision-tooled and tightly-wound as a Swiss watch, writer/director Rian
Johnson’s stunning sci-fi thriller Looper may already be 2012’s film of the year, its complex,
dazzling premise so full of ideas and heart that even the prodigiously
litigious and carnaptious Harlan Ellison hasn’t gotten around to suing it
yet. It’s a spectacular
thrill-ride as interested in its moral and philosophical dilemmas as it is in
its violent, high-octane action scenes.
60 years from
now time travel has been both invented and outlawed with only criminals using
it. In the future when the Mob
wants you dead, it doesn’t kill you; it hog-ties you, hoods you, pops you in a
time machine and zaps you 30 years into the past where a specialised assassin –
a “looper” – waits to blow you out of your socks and dispose of your body. Life is sweet if you’re a looper. You’re well-paid, stylish, you live the
high life; the best clubs, the best drugs, the best women. The only rule is you never let a target
escape. Especially if that target
is your future self – an act of delayed suicide known as “closing the loop.”
Joe (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) is one of
the best loopers in the business.
Smooth, confident, efficient and callous, he’s smarter than the average
looper. He’s been saving his
money, learning French, has plans to retire, to get out of the business, to
travel. But Joe’s well-ordered
life spins out of control when his next victim arrives; Joe’s future,
fifty-something self (Bruce Willis).
Escaping from his younger self, old Joe isn’t going out without a fight
and is intent on changing his fate.
He’s going to save the future, his future, by killing the Rainmaker, the
future’s Keyser Soze, the gangster who runs the world and has marked old Joe
for death. And in this
time-stream, the Rainmaker is still just a defenceless child.
With his only
clues to the Rainmaker’s identity a date of birth and the hospital the child
was born in, older Joe sets out, Terminator-style, to track down and murder every child born on
that day, while younger Joe is determined to kill his older counterpart and
close his loop. Pursued by mentor
and boss Abe (Jeff Daniels) and his army of heavily armed “gat” men, young Joe is forced to take
refuge with tough single-mom Sara (Emily Blunt), becoming reluctant protector to her odd and gifted
young son Cid (Pierce Gagnon) at their remote farmhouse.
It’s only a matter of time however before older Joe works his way down
his list to Sara and Cid though forcing the two Joes onto a collision course…
A big, bold,
intelligent, ambitious piece of science fiction with a strong, believable,
emotional core, Looper
is quite simply stunning. The
world Johnson builds is utterly convincing. Sure there’s a heavy steampunk influence in the guns,
hoverbikes and time machines, the 21st century’s hit men dress like
the James gang and the future’s drugs are dripped into your eye but Looper’s crumbling metropolis with its derelict
buildings, burnt out cars and squatter camps is merely an extrapolation of the
urban decay around us, where 30 years of economic decline could logically take
us. And the people are no
different either; mostly working joes just trying to get by. Admittedly, by murdering people from
the future.
Equal parts
existential puzzle, kick-ass action flick and melancholic love story, it’s an
intimate epic that keeps you nailed to your seat. The future that Willis’ older, wiser, world-weary Joe is
trying to save isn’t the world’s; it’s merely his own world. He’s come back from the future to save
his murdered wife, collateral damage to his own botched assassination. He reasons that if the man who wants
him dead never exists, then the woman he loves won’t be murdered and he’s
prepared to go to any lengths, including murdering kids, to save her. Gordon-Levitt meanwhile isn’t
interested in the potential paradoxes thrown up by his future self’s survival;
his Joe is a heartless, selfish hustler, living for the moment, for the
thrill. He just wants his life
back. It’s time for Willis’ old
man to step aside and let youth have its day. During a coffee shop détente that echoes Michael Mann’s Heat, old and young Joe confront each other
over coffee, steak and eggs, Gordon-Levitt demanding: “Why don't you do what
old men do and die?" Yet it’s
old Joe’s refusal to accept the hand fate’s dealt him that sends young Joe to
Sara and Cid, rekindling the spark of humanity in him.
The
performances are excellent with Willis’ superannuated, smirk-free, hard man the
best thing he’s done in years while Emily Blunt is strong and solid as the
woman who could mean Joe’s redemption but is far from just an obligatory love
interest, their growing attraction and romance wisely kept to a simmer. As Abe, the irascible gangster the mob
has sent back in time to recruit and run the loopers, Jeff Daniels is a
likeably, genial monster. In one
of the film’s more unsettling scenes, the offscreen torture he dishes out to
Paul Dano’s sympathetic but doomed looper Seth (who’s allowed his future self
to run) has horrific consequences for Seth’s older version who literally starts
to fade away before your eyes, a grim foreshadowing of the fate that awaits Joe
if he can’t close his loop. Looper belongs to Joseph Gordon-Levitt
though. With contacts tinting his
eyes, the magic of cinema (prosthetics and CGI) altering his features and
adopting Willis’ mannerisms (the swagger, the insouciant smirk, the hairline),
he effortlessly conveys the charismatic Willis of the late ‘80s without ever
simply impersonating him. It’s a
subtle, nuanced performance that even makes you forget the prosthetic schnozz
he’s sporting.
With its
delicate balance of grand concept and breathless action perhaps the boldest
thing about Looper is
it has the courage to close its own loop, delivering an intricate and
satisfying resolution without ever spoon-feeding or patronising its
audience. Intelligent and
thrilling with an emotional and philosophical punch, Looper is a film we’ll still be watching in 30
years.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt,
Bruce Willis,
Piper Perabo,
Noah Segan, Paul Dano
and Jeff Daniels
Genres:
Action, Sci-Fi
Language:
English
Runtime:
118 minutes
Certificate:
15
Rating:
5/5
UK
Release Date:
28th
of September 2012
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