As Dean Pelton of Greendale Community College understands, time travel is a tough thing to base a story around. In my experience, narratives with time warps, alternate timelines, or parallel universes are enjoyable, but are often brought down by all the logical paradoxes and outright absurdity of their concepts.
Looper, however, is different. There’s no doubt that it includes time travel, different timelines, and two versions of the main character existing at the same exact time. It’s the effortlessness with which it paces itself and lays these elements out throughout its runtime that makes it a fun watch, but also what I believe will help it stand the test of time.
The film takes place 30 years before time travel is invented, though, meaning that what we see is grounded, for the most part. In the future, time travel has been outlawed and is used mostly by criminals to dispose of thorns in their side.
They’ll take whatever target they want to whack, and because it’s near impossible to dispose of a body in 2074, send it to 2044, where some non-time-traveler called a “looper” will kill them and collect their bounty. There are more complexities to the system that are fleshed out piece-by-piece, but that’s part of the film’s intrigue.
In this way and a few others, I could not stop being reminded of the magnificence of Inception throughout. The way the intricacies of extraction and inception, the different layers of the dream, and the characters’ relationships and histories were delivered all felt like huge influences on the storytelling methods Rian Johnson put to fantastic use in Looper.
The film follows Joe, a looper in Kansas City, as well as Joe, a man from the future sent back to be killed by Joe. A problem arises when Joe hesitates before killing Joe. This gives Joe a moment to knock Joe unconscious and run away, leading to Joe pursuing in chase.
I suppose it doesn’t all translate very well into words. Looper Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Old Joe (Bruce Willis) are visually distinct enough to alleviate any possible confusion; you won’t have trouble discerning who’s who.
Of course, more happens than just what’s in that brief joke of a summary, but to go into anything beyond that would ruin the fun. Just like “Inception,” the myriad of twists and revelations are what made the experience.
One of the things I found most interesting about the movie was that, at different points and for different reasons, both Joes act as protagonist and antagonist, due to some really powerful moral quandaries. There were times when I was conflicted about who to root for, but everything becomes clearer at the film’s conclusion.
Both main actors are flawless in their roles, but props especially to Gordon-Levitt, who, even beyond the somewhat silly looking make-up used to turn him into a young Bruce Willis, captures and replicates Bruce’s mannerisms marvelously.
Jeff Daniels plays the head of the loopers in Kansas City and is, as usual, fantastic. There’s an air of menace that permeates his every action in the film, and though he’s only in it for a few scenes, he was one of the most entertaining parts of the movie.
Aesthetically speaking, the film is serviceable, but it does have a pretty distinct flavor. The inner city is something along the lines of a less dystopian Blade Runner Los Angeles, but we don’t see too much of it once the S hits the F. Rural Kansas does provide a pretty unique setting for a time travel piece, in that it’s unremarkable in most ways.
The action, however, has a serious punch. The combination of excellent audio mixing and guns that kill the hell out of dudes make up the film’s stylish and over-the-top approach to action, but the scenes are paced in a way that it never becomes tedious or repetitive.
Simply put, there’s a lot to love about Looper. In fact, after seeing it twice, I still can’t think of any issues I have with it. There wasn’t a poor performance in the bunch, the cinematography was distinct, clear, and fun, and it delivered its excellent narrative effortlessly. Watch Looper. Just do it. Please.
