In the year 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a gun for hire called a looper, dispatches targets in a remote field in Kansas on behalf of a criminal organization run by a figure called the Rainmaker.
Joe arrives, on schedule; a kneeling man appears, on schedule, hooded and bound; Joe fires his blunderbuss and cleans up the aftermath. That’s the extent of his job, and then it’s payday.
Looper  Directed by Rian Johnson Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Piper Perabo, Noah Segan |
The twist is that both the moribund targets and the Rainmaker’s crime syndicate are another 30 years into the future, in a time when technology has rendered homicide nearly impossible; so those marked for death are sent back a few decades to when it was still easy enough to dispose of a corpse with a quick trip to the incinerator.
Joe is resigned to the fact that one day he will “close his loop”: his future self will be rounded up and sent back in time to have his contract terminated by his own bullet, leaving no loose ends whatsoever.
But when it comes time for Joe’s loop to close, his older self (Bruce Willis) appears, unbound and unhooded, and promptly knocks him out and escapes, leaving both their lives forfeit.
In an ambitious, virtuosic aside, we see Joe – in a time-line that no longer exists – close his loop, killing his older self, and then live out most of his life, marrying an unnamed Chinese love (Qing Xu) only to witness her death during his own eventual apprehension for the closing of the loop, which does not go quite according to plan.
And that leaves two Joes, 30 years of age apart, to contend for a future that is suddenly up for grabs: Young Joe wants only to kill his older self to get square with Abe (Jeff Daniels), the Rainmaker’s lieutenant, while Older Joe has some interesting if rather selfish ideas about how to get back to his own life and time.
Director Rian Johnson, who made his debut with the JGL-starring neo-noir Brick in 2005, brings the same skill in genre alchemy to Looper, ducking in and out of different generic traditions with ease, deftly interweaving humour with a skyrocketing body count punctuated by severe violence.
While Looper’s mainstay is a grafting of classic action conventions onto science-fiction underpinnings, the larger and trickier questions – for better or for worse – go willfully unexplored. The film covers enough ground with such a light touch that it could benefit from intermittently slowing down and getting further into the details. (Additional scenes set in China were cut from the North American release, though they likely didn’t get into metaphysics).
From its wholly studio-free production to a warm public reception so far, Looper certainly makes a strong case for independent sci-fi, but for all its careful crafting and assured execution, there are moments when it is simply too big for its budget.
For instance, a gripping scene involving a special effect like an anti-gravity maelstrom lingers long enough for its roughness around the edges to register, and the film’s heavily featured jet-bikes are never quite visually believable as hovering off the ground.
But the characters hold it all together. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in top form as Joe, turning in what is essentially an inspired performance as Young Bruce Willis through layers of make-up and prosthetics. Willis himself is in Die Hard mode, and since his motivation doesn’t withstand a lot of scrutiny after he sermonizes to his younger self about violence and worth, that is probably for the best.
Emily Blunt plays Sarah, a sugar cane farmer with a five-year-old (Pierce Gagnon in a stellar performance) and a shotgun full of rock salt she is not afraid to use, who becomes the film’s third main character by a twist of geography and represents one of the only sympathetic figures.
Rounding out the cast are Piper Perabo as a showgirl Joe desires, Paul Dano as a fellow looper prone to trouble, Garret Dillahunt as one of Abe’s mercenaries, and Brick alum Noah Segan as an inept enforcer wannabe.
Looper is a bit too piecemeal to be called flawless, but far too refreshing not to recommend. If Prometheus stands as the sci-fi studio film of the year, then Looper – with a little less polish and a lot more heart, fewer flaws and more ideas – is its independent counterpart. Between the two of them, science fiction cinema is alive and well.