A man, world-weary and scared of the future, travels back in time to kill a child who will one day grow up to take over the gangster world and cause all kinds of havoc. Someone else, aware of the future and not willing to change its outcome, tries to stop the other man from destroying the timeline. Twenty-five years ago, a person would say that this movie was Terminator. Now, the current generation will call this film Looper. Either way, the plot still makes for fantastic storytelling.
Rian Johnson creates a unique visual world in his sci-fi thriller Looper (2012), with a weary future that does not seem too far out of believability in today's constantly evolving technological landscape. In the year 2074, gangsters will control black-market time machines. When their goons capture these gangster's rivals, the new solution is to send their enemies back into the past- where men in the past stand in waiting with a shotgun.
These "loopers" collect large sums of money- until the gangsters decide to "close the loop" and send the looper's future selves back to the past. The loopers of the past effectively kill themselves- a sign that they have thirty years to live the rest of their lives before the gangsters in the future return to send them back to their deaths in a never-ending loop.
This part of the film only serves as the backstory to a dramatized tale about one such looper named Joe, played in heavy make-up by Joseph Gordon Levitt. Living in a bleak, urban setting, Joe is a successful looper who has a friend in the looper's future-born handler (Jeff Daniels) and rivals with another looper determined to prove himself (Noah Segan). He has made a good living learning French to impress a waiter, and continues to stash money away for the future.
When Joe gets assigned his next kill, he returns to his given field to find a man (Bruce Willis) without the normal face cover. Joe hesitates to kill this man, and as such, the man from the future avoids the gun shot and manages to subdue Joe. But this is no ordinary man. He is also Joe- the future Joe, sent from the future to "close the loop". But he has now escaped, and now young Joe is on the run from his own employers for allowing a man from the future to run free. Bruce Willis' older Joe is now hunting a child who will one day grow up to be the man who ruins Joe's future. Joseph Gordon Levitt's Joe takes refuge at a farm owned by the protective mother (Emily Blunt) of a young boy. Now, young Joe must find a way to stop old Joe and retake his life without risking losing his job and still having to face "closing the loop" later.
Confused yet?
Looper succeeds as a movie because it makes viewers think about their own lives. It offers an interesting conundrum: Can people risk changing the past if what they do affects the future so heavily that the new future is not even the same as before?
The convoluted plot makes more sense during the actual film. It establishes both the past world of the loopers and the future world of Bruce Willis well, though it remains a little too bleak at certain times. Sometimes its hard to follow the many facets of time travel that show up throughout the film, but as a rule most of the questions will be answered by the end (note: most of the questions).
Bruce Willis gives his typically grisly performance as the ticked off man trying to save his future. Joseph Gordon Levitt's make-up is a little distracting at the beginning, but viewers will eventually get used to the unnaturally thick eyebrows and blue eyes that will one day be the trademark face of Bruce Willis.
If Looper has any major faults, it's that its originality is not so original. Many people and critics will probably hail this movie has a "creative masterpiece", but Looper serves better as a sentimental allusion to other movies in the field.
The attempt to kill a kid before he grows up to be a threat to those in power? The Terminator franchise. A romance that can never be due to the woman's commitment to another person? Casablanca. Avoiding talking about the future in order to protect the past? Back to the Future.
Looper is creative, and, in a sense, original. The most "original" film of the year? Not really. A decent action film with a pulse-pouding thrills and intense action sequences? For the most part. A plot, though a little borrowed, that still manages to keep viewers on the edge of their seats and constantly thinking about the choices they make? Most definitely.
Three and a half out of five stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment