28/09/2012: Looper [2012]

Looper was steadily holding my mild interest for a while now, until it premiered at TIFF and the reviews started rolling in. The ratings held very strong, and the reviews raved and so I decided I would see Looper opening night, already worried the movie wouldn't live up to my expectations. However, Looper met them in everyway, and has probably just snatched itself a place in my top movies of the year. So, how did Looper successfully close the loop?

For those of you who live in complete darkness, Looper is a time-travel movie starring Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Bruce-Willis, and Emily Blunt. In the year 1972, time travel will have been invented and almost immediately outlawed. However, criminal organizations have been using time travel to pull off traceless, and evidence-less hits using men they call Loopers. Transported back to the year 2042 Joe works as a Looper, killing men who are transported back in time bound and hooded and fetching a pretty penny for it. However, if you are still alive 30 years from then, the mob sends your future self back, you kill yourself and close your loop, tying up any loose ends. Sure, knowing your death will happen in 30 years comes with a nice retirement plan, but could you really kill yourself?

The trailers tend to showcase Looper as a lot more action oriented than it actually is and while there are quite a few great action scenes and no lack of violence or blood, Looper is a movie you watch for the intelligent script, dialogue and characters. Rian Johnson's script and direction is amazing, weaving together a complex web of time travel paradoxes without making it more than you can follow. The key is that he doesn't bother with explaining the time travel mechanisms and physics, he doesn't bother with how it works or what are the rules, he just lets you figure them out as the movie plays out. That means while you won't get bogged down to much with the technicalities or details you most surely will have a hefty debate on the concept after the movie. (Tip: don't involve a physicist.)

I'd be angry if I looked like half Bruce Willies half Joseph Gordon-Levitt too.

While Johnson had created a very interesting future ahead of us, both in 2072 and 2042, it is also a very believable one. He doesn't go the way of floating cities and robots, instead just advancing society in a very relatable direction. The division between classes is bigger than ever, with the rich living in excess and the poor left to barely survive. We get to see both sides of this divide quite well, as our Looper, Joe, starts out living a life of partying, whoring, expensive cars and a nice drug addiction only to end up on the run, hopping trains, and hiding from the law after he fails to close his loop and his future self escapes.

When you really look at it, Looper is a character study and even though we are dealing with changing the future as well as the present's implications on the future, the movie is largely driven by the past. Or at least Joe's past which is technically the future, so none of it has happened yet. (Don't worry, you will enjoy Looper whether you try to piece together a timeline the whole movie or just go with the flow.) Joe is a very troubled man, who in most movies is no more than the villain but Looper plays him off as an anti-hero. While we learn about Joe's past, we start to understand his motivations, but what is interesting is how both young and old Joe actually start to grow into separate people while remaining two sides of the same coin. I think that if Johnson had chosen, he could have made both old or young Joe into the relatable character and the one audiences identify as who they should support. However, it is clear that young Joe is the identified "hero", although how much of an enemy can he be to himself?

It looks like they spilled a ton of sugar all over that table.

Now, as great as the script and material is in Johnson's hands, any movie so driven by it's characters needs some good actors and some decent performances. Johnson get's amazing performances from the entire cast all around. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play young and old Joe, with Willis proving the second time this year just how great of an actor he is when you need him to be more than just John McClane. JG-L continues to gain fame, although this time he looks a little funny with his Bruce Willis make-up effects. Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano and Noah Segan also do outstanding as the slightly clearer bad guys, but even they act their way into a grey area. Lastly Emily Blunt gives possibly her best performance as Sara, dropping her British accent for a much more rural country appearance.

As serious as Looper is, it is also filled with a lot of very well done jokes and one liners. I don't mean just one or two lame catchphrases or cliched lines, but literally a good dozen comments and lines (mostly delivered by Willis) that made the entire audience laugh. Honestly, this movie had me laughing than some comedies, and it wasn't even trying that hard. Johnson has worked in the humour perfectly, delivering some great jokes without them feeling out of place in such a serious movie and without ruining any of the atmosphere. The last thing I expected watching Looper was that level of humour, and but the movie is so much better because of it.

She looks rather clean for living on a farm where I'm doubtful of the plumbing.

There is not a doubt in my mind that Looper will be a science fiction classic and often listed in all future time travel movie lists. It will definitely be in my Top Movies of 2012 list, and it wouldn't be hard to convince me to go see it again in theater. I would also encourage everyone to check this out because you want to see this in theaters. One, because the audio works so much better in a theater, and the sound in this movie is done amazingly well. Also, if you don't get around to seeing it soon someone might spoiler it for you, and knowing the ending will not improve the movie for you. I wasn't exactly happy with the ending, but that was the point and I appreciate the bold move on Johnson's part.

Link:
Looper IMDb