The year is 2044 – just a few decades before the invention of time travel – and the crime bosses of the future, rather than disposing of victims themselves, are sending them back in time to face the hitmen ‘loopers.’
“Looper,” the sophomore effort of writer-director Rian Johnson, is a gritty, time-travel sci-fi starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, the pair play the same man at different ages in time travel.
Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, working for a luxurious salary with the understanding that when he grows old, the mob will send him back in time to be killed, “closing the loop” and erasing their ties to him.
When Joe’s older self (Bruce Willis) arrives, however, he manages to escape, and sets out on a personal vendetta, Forcing the young Joe to evade the wrath of the mob while tracking down his older self to discover his motives.
Since the two actors play different versions of the same character, Gordon-Levitt has been heavily made-up to add elements of Willis’ facial structure to his own. Although the illusion can be a bit distracting at first, as the film wears on it proves to be subtly effective.
The superb acting helps blend the characters’ identities. Gordon-Levitt shows a remarkable ability to adopt Willis’ demeanor and combine it with his own. He tosses off sarcastic one-liners with the smirking bravado Willis has been perfecting since “Die Hard,” and he avoids seeming like a mere imitation. Later in the film, when Joe is taken in by a single mother (Emily Blunt), he speaks with a charm straight out of Willis’ playbook.
Although Willis’ character is less often in the spotlight, he turns in an excellent performance as well. “Looper” proves, without a doubt, that the 57-year-old is still bankable as an action hero, yet puts the older Joe in emotional situations that Willis handles beautifully.
In scenes with his younger self, Willis is fully convincing as a man looking back over the expanse of his life, wanting to tell himself how things will turn out, but knowing he can’t.
This conflicted relationship with his past is evident in Willis’ performance and makes it quite touching. In “Looper,” both Willis and Gordon-Levitt put in some of the best work of their careers.
“Looper” is also an impressively-made film. Its vision of the American Midwest a few decades in the future is creative without testing the boundaries of realism (time travel excepted, of course).
The camera approaches situations in unexpected ways, making a basic sequence like climbing down a fire escape seem dizzying and fresh in its presentation.
Worthy of note is the film’s score by Rian Johnson’s cousin, Nathan Johnson. The music ranges from pounding synth to understated orchestrations –– and some excellent combinations of the two –– without distracting from the onscreen action.
Sci-fi fans will be pleased to see that Rian Johnson has thought out his time-travel premise thoroughly. The film obeys its own rules and the entire narrative makes logical sense.
Action sequences provide several time-related stunts as ingenious as anything Christopher Nolan dreamed up in “Inception.” Unlike that movie, though, which was structured like an elaborate puzzle for the viewer to solve, “Looper” resists the urge to get carried away with its own cleverness.
The time-travel setup, however intriguing, is ultimately treated as a backdrop for the human story Johnson is trying to tell. In that regard, “Looper” succeeds where much science-fiction fails, managing to engage its audience’s emotions while challenging their minds.
pkistler@hillsdale.edu