Raving For Rian: Looper (2012)

 

In the future, Time Travel has been outlawed. The only people who use it are crime syndicates, as a means of getting rid of bodies. If the mob wants someone gone, they send them back to the present, and then a special assassin called a “Looper” kills them, and disposes of their corpse. The only rule of looping is that you never let your target escape, even if that target is yourself. So what will Joe, a selfish, drug-addicted Looper, do when his future self appears, and manages to escape hiss grasp? Hunt him down, and pray that he can kill the latter before he changes anything.

Looper is, without a doubt, one of the best time travel films ever made. I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the best sci-fi films ever made. It’s not just fast-paced, visually-stunning, and original, it’s also got a surprising amount of dramatic heft. The back-story that’s given to Future Joe, played by Bruce Willis, is really quite touching. Despite the fact that he’s the film’s ostensible villain, and we see him do horrible things, like kill children, we always empathize with him. You learn that he had a wife, whom he met in China, and who helped him overcome his drug addiction and violent tendencies. You really do believe that they love each other, and that he’d kill anyone to keep her safe. Roger Ebert once said that movies were “machines that generate empathy” and this film manages to generate empathy for all of its characters. But in case you don’t care about originality, or sympathetic characters, both of which this movie has in spades, it’s just a really good sci-fi flick. The design of the future is unique, but also not too bizarre. There are just a few subtle changes, like to the way guns are designed, and how cars look. The cinematography is superb, and the editing is insane. There are several sequences where young Joe is tweaking, and the way the camera spins, and shifts focus, is fantastic. This is a really well-made movie, with a brisk, original story, and some very good performances.

Now, If I have any complaints, it’s the fact that the film’s central romance between Young Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Sara, played by Emily Blunt, feels extremely rushed, and the time travel logic doesn’t really hold up if you think about it too hard. With the romance, Sara goes from hating Joe, to sleeping with him, in about a day. And while it’s normal for characters in movies to go from hating each other to loving each other, here, it felt a little bit jarring.   And as for the logical gaps, those are kind of expected with time travel stories. In this case, it’s the fact that Future Joe could be stopped very easily, and there’s really no guarantee that the apocalypse that he’s been sent back to prevent will not happen. Young Joe even acknowledges the former problem. In one scene, he says to Future Joe, “just tell me what happens, and I won’t do it. The future isn’t set in stone.” That’s true. Young Joe could just choose to go down a different path, and then Future Joe doesn’t exist. And to be fair, the film does acknowledge this. At the same time, though, if you think too hard about the various timelines, and how they’re all fluid and constantly changing, the story starts to fall apart. But, again, you kind of have to get over that fact if you want to enjoy this movie. And, to be fair, it’s pretty easy to look past those logical gaps. I just focused on them because I’m a writer who thinks too much about stuff. And even then, I still love the movie. It’s fast, well-filmed, terrifically acted, original, and has a surprising amount of heart. Don’t hesitate to give it a look.