"Looper" - Film Review

I’ve been obsessed with time travel ever since I saw the Back to the Future movies when I was younger. And I have a freakish level of knowledge on the subject matter for someone who’s really shitty at physics and math. I go out of my way to consume stories that involve the tricky narrative device (Anyone remember Timeline? No? Good, cause it was pretty bad). Which is to say before getting into this review, you should know that I’m totally biased in Looper’s favor despite its actual quality.  That withstanding, I think even without its high minded sci-fi and time travel trappings, it’s actually a really good movie.

Looper has a surprisingly complicated plot that takes a lot of liberties regarding what is possible within the confines of time travel. Due to its more open ended views of what you can and can’t do with time travel, it allows for the narrative to get away with some interesting choices. Which in turn allows for, like the best sci-fi films, some interesting ethical and philosophical quandaries. Joseph Gordon Levitt, prosthetic-ed up to look like a younger Bruce Willis, plays Joe Simmons. In the not so distant future (2044), Simmons works for a criminal organization that’s powerful in the even further future (2074) where time travel exists, but is illegal.  He’s been hired out by the organization to kill people they send back in time. However, when he finds himself forced to kill his future self, things go awry and then the film really begins to pick up; mad dashing energetically through one morally grey, stylish, and action packed sequence after another. 

Though Looper is set in the not too distant future, not much has change. Minus a few futuristic technological quirks (notably hover bikes), the film is essentially grounded in a world strikingly similar to our own. It’s a bit grittier and darker, and it certainly feels more sinister, but though the computers and security systems are sleeker, and touch based, people’s lives haven’t drastically changed. Much like the brilliant sci-fi film Children of Men, Looper allows us to pick up on just how much has changed through tiny background details. It doesn’t always beg us to notice just how flippantly cool it is trying to be with its depiction of the not too distant future, and that’s all for the better. The world feels lived in without trying so hard to get us to buy that it’s totally realistic. I got a real Blade Runner vibe from a number of shots of the city. There was a distilled, distant quality to many shots in the film that allowed the sets and scenery to speak for themselves. 

For the science fiction or time travel geek out there, I can’t see many being disappointed. The script boasts one of the most engaging and intricate sci-fi narratives I’ve seen in a long time. And while the film is highly visually stylish, and intensely action packed; it remains wonderfully smart and ambitious. In the capable hands of writer/director Rian Johnson, Looper is one of the best crafted blockbusters of 2012. Though some of the film’s execution didn’t necessarily grip me as much as it should have, it was made up by some really good performances by Levitt, Willis, and Emily Blunt doing her best Southern accent. 

Looper: A-