Looper

Dystopic futures, time-travel, super human powers - all pretty familiar stuff by now, right? Wrong? Well, sort of both. Rian Johnson’s third feature length film is set in 2042, envisioning a future where time travel hasn’t yet been invented but, thirty years from then, it will have been. Time travel is illegal in the future, but the mob of 2072 use it to send those they want killed back in time for the deed to be executed and for the bodies to be disposed of, so as not to alert the attention of 2072’s authorities (apparently disposing of bodies is really hard in the future, but hiding a huge time-machine isn’t. Must be a weird place.)

            The film’s protagonist Joe, played by flavour of the year Joseph Gordon Levitt, is a “Looper”; an assassin hired by the future’s criminals to kill their targets at the precise moment that they’re thrust back in time. Joe’s life is going pretty well up until the day when he recognises the target as his future self, wonderfully brought to life by the immutably satisfying on screen presence of Bruce Willis. The shock of this encounter results in Joe failing to kill his target and “close his Loop”; which, as you’ll learn if you see the film, is pretty bad news. Frankly, out of deference to JGL, the shock of realising that your future self is actually Bruce Willis would be enough to stop me from killing old Joe, at least not without getting an autograph and throwing a few Hans Gruber lines at him first. I digress. When the old Joe manages to escape, leaving his younger self unconscious, he goes on a rampage through the city and starts to cause all kinds of time-travel flavoured havoc. Young Joe now has to chase after old Brucey in efforts to hunt him down before the mob kills his present and future self themselves.

            The most striking feature of Looper, for this writer at least, was in its rendering of the future city. Most Science Fiction films make great efforts to exhibit their imagined future’s art design, often through audaciously grandiose establishing shots. Looper, refreshingly, takes a much more low-key approach to its representation of the future’s cityscape. The mucky alleys and dog-eat-dog attitude of the poverty stricken streets, where a tangible sense of unease courses from one person to the next, superbly backdrop the opening few scenes of the film. Without obtusely spelling things out to its audience Looper manages to completely immerse them in the smoky and intimidating tone of the city’s streets.

            As one would expect from a big budget Science Fiction film, it is, at least initially, fairly action-centric. The whole film manages to consistently nail its action sequences bang on the head and provide some real shock factor with nuanced and consistently subtle flair. A stand out scene in this regard sees Paul Dano’s character’s future self desperately trundling through the city streets slowly losing digits and limbs as his past, younger self is tortured for his failure to close the Loop; it’s superbly gruesome without being overtly gratuitous. This said, there is a fantastic scene involving Bruce Willis, some guns and lots of dead people which was a joy to behold for its acerbically violent extravagance.

            However, as the narrative progresses the emphasis on action recedes, with much of the film playing out as a character study of both Joes whilst taking on a sort of domestic drama vibe in the latter half of the film, I’m refraining from details here to avoid spoilers. Looper starts to lose itself a tad in this section of the narrative. In its exploration of JGL’s relationship with a female farmer, played by Emily Blunt, and her young son, Rian Johnson’s familiarity with the American Independent film sector comes to the fore. The film’s investigation of the bonds and relationships between characters whilst unveiling the fragility of the modern, neigh the future, domestic space of America ironically doesn’t feel quite at home in the context of Looper’s prior dynamic and fast paced kineticism. Fortunately however it’s not too long before the film picks up its pace again for the electrifying narrative crescendo.

            Looper, like all great Science Fiction, is able to entice, engage and excite its audience not just through bombastic spectacle but, more pertinently, through the set of ideas and possibilities that the technology of the future imposes on its narrative. In this case, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s time travel. Looper manages to propose a set of fairly complex ideas within an impressively linear narrative and for the most part, the ideas hold up. This is not to say that Looper provides a particularly mind shattering exploration of time, rather that it is competent and comfortable in the simplicity and relative austerity of its plot’s fluctuating temporalities; quietly clever without ever being pompous.

            In spite the film’s often clumsy oscillation between Hollywood spectacle and American Independent melancholia, never quite managing to balance the two comfortably, Looper is by and large a bold, imaginative and searingly cool piece of Sci-fi. Bruce Willis and JGL pair off against one another perfectly, with a strong supporting cast, including the always magnificent Jeff Daniels, helping to maintain a keen level of interest even in the slightly less engaging sections. “This decade’s The Matrix”- probably not, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Looper is an inventive, refreshing and humbly unique package that is sure to entertain and enthral in equal measure.