Looper – review
Future self: Bruce Willis in sci-fi blockbuster Looper. Photograph: Tristar/Everett / Rex Features
What do you get when you mix an action legend, one of Hollywood’s current brightest stars and a time travel-meets-gangster film mash-up? You will need to watch Looper to find out, because emerging writer/director Rian Johnson has brought an original slice of sci-fi excitement to the big screen.
After a summer that has seen the climax to an epic trilogy (The Dark Knight Rises), a monolithic superhero sandwich (The Avengers Assemble) and various reboots and remakes (The Amazing Spiderman, Total Recall), Looper went a little under the radar. Then all of a sudden hype aplenty billed this film up as the “next big thing”.
You might think that an action/thriller dealing with the concept of time-travel would equate to a mind-bending ride that poses as many questions as it does answers (think Donnie Darko or Twelve Monkeys), but talk of this film as “this decade’s The Matrix” – one film magazine labelled it so – is misleading. Looper actually has quite a straightforward premise and Johnson deliberately attempts to lead viewers away from the worries of the science of time travel and its infinite complications.
In the year 2074, time travel has been invented, but it is immediately outlawed. Gang bosses with access to the technology though use it to send back adversaries for hitmen in the past to bump off, as having people “whacked” in 2074 is extremely difficult due to the strides forward made in identification and tracking. These low-grade assassins are called “loopers”. Armed with pocket watches and short-range guns called “blunderbusses”, the loopers know the time and place their targets – always hooded and shackled – are to be sent back to, and as soon as the target appears they must execute them. Reward for a successful kill is silver bars, which are strapped to the victim’s back. Failure to carry out a contact is not an option.
Kansas USA in 2044 is the setting and things are fairly grim. There appears to be many pockets of poverty amidst an exhausted metropolis run by mobsters. There are inevitable technological advances, but whilst there is the odd hoverbike, there are also masses of solar-powered cars that seem to be the result of reactive, rather than proactive energy measures. We learn that there has been an emergence of minor telekinesis in a small percentage of inhabitants, apparently due to genetic mutation. However, the blessed few seem unable to do much more with these powers than be able to pull off a gimmicky floating coin trick.
Our main protagonist, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), is a looper, as is his best friend Seth (Paul Dano). The loopers are kept on a short leash by their boss Abe (an intriguingly-cast Jeff Daniels) and in turn by Abe’s more privileged and trusted henchman, called the “Gat Men”. Abe has been sent back from 2074 to manage the loopers. Most loopers are aware that, at any time, the bosses in the future may decide to “close the loop”, effectively ending the looper’s contract. This entails sending the looper’s 2074 self back to 2044 to be unwittingly killed by their former self, thus sentencing them to death – but allowing them the golden handshake of a lump sum to use for the remaining 30 years of their life.
Near the start of the film we see a loop closed and an acceptant looper call for celebrations. However, Seth’s future self is also sent back, but he discovers the identity of his target before he has taken the time to kill him and this realisation causes him to freak out and his future self escapes. This does not go down well.
Joe is thinking of a “getting out” and has been saving up silver bars and learning French, but before he can get wheels in motion, it seems bosses have called time and looked to close his loop. However, when his 2074 self returns he is unhooded and Joe instinctively knows he is looking at his future self (Bruce Willis). Should he turn him loose? Should he kill him? Can he kill him? Old Joe arrives in the past with his own agenda. What develops is a cat and mouse chase involving both versions of Joe, plus the Gat Men who are hunting them both.
Each time young Joe comes into contact with old Joe, we get present dialogue allied with older Joe’s flashbacks, which are in fact flash-forwards for the young Joe. Confused? Well don’t be, because Johnson has clearly set out to stop the viewer from thinking too hard and 2074 Joe berates 2044 Joe when he asks too many questions about how it all works. Old Joe is only worried about tracking down a mysterious character called the “Rainmaker”, who is unknown and unseen, but powerful and in 2074 is closing all the loops and this is causing widespread concern.
Looper’s premise is a cool idea, it’s a gripping film and there are great performances from Emily Blunt (who comes into the plot later), Willis and the facially-morphed Gordon-Levitt, but it is not the new The Matrix. It just doesn’t go into enough detail about the future dystopia we are seeing or the “how” of the time-travel elements and it rehashes some ideas seen in other sci-fi films, including The Terminator.
Like with Johnson’s (and Gordon-Levitt’s) breakthrough film Brick, we have a student filmmaker’s type of concept, delivered with more of a budget, but no more scope than his cult debut. We have already had this decade’s The Matrix, and that was Inception. Looper is just not that clever or epic as either and I don’t think Johnson even had delusions of grandeur about his film, as he seems more inclined to make an ultra-cool, quirky sci-fi film. If you watch the film with this mind-set, you will love it.
Looper (15)
Directed by Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Noah Segon, Pierce Gagnon.
Running time: 118 minutes
Looper is showing at the Hackney Picturehouse throughout October.