In Hollywood, concept is king. The Matrix spawned a generation of Neo and Morpheus clones living out what if scenarios. Now comes Rian Johnson‘s Looper, a Pinstripe must see movie 2012 – a what if moment that largely follows the blueprint of The Terminator with regards to plot and structure.
In a HG Wells universe, some thirty years into our future, time travel is a black market service. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) knocks off victims for cash. A hard nosed blunderbuss toting assassin, Joe is living the life; dating a stripper, driving fast cars and clubbing late into the night. His lifestyle being financed by mob fund from the future.
However, as good as things are, every Looper has thirty years to live after which, a contract is issued to kill the them by sending their future avatar self to kill them in the past.
Lost?
Well, it’s a lot less complicated than Inception but challenges your brain to chronologically thread which story we are following. It is helped by a running voice over which quickly establishes the rules of the world.
When 5-year-old Cid is discovered to become the future Rain Maker, a Magneto type character with remarkable destructive potential to cyclone his surroundings, older Joe (Bruce Willis) is determined to annihilate the child before he can evolve into an evil tyrant. Shades of Stephen King’s Dead Zone and The Omen echo through the narrative as there is always the moral dilemma the movie places us into – If you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler and alter history?
What provides Bruce Willis with motivation is the love of his wife (Qing Xu) whom he has devoted himself to. We are informed from a time traveler that Shanghai is the city of the future. Sarah (Emily Blunt) takes up a similar role to Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise as she tries to protect her son (who actually does not believe she is his mother) and show him enough love him to produce a healthy child with a loving outlook on the world. It all goes haywire when older Joe tracks them down.
The movie is a high concept thriller, which unfolds like a video game. It falls short of achieving cult status due to an amalgamation of various plots and obvious filmic borrowings.
However, it does succeed is in providing a visual collage of the future, albeit, a depressing dystopia where the population is poverty-stricken rather than harmoniously roaming the planet. This cyber-punk bleak outlook brings to mind visionaries like Philip K Dick, Richard Matheson and William Boroughs who map out a Wild West futuristic gun slinging Cricton show.
The opening provides a snippet of the narrative to follow – The looper awaits his target and right on schedule, it is delivered from the future and blasted against the diegesis of a ticking clock. Later, subplots merge with incredible precision to allow the main story to climax.
Looper avoids time travel as its thematic focal point, barley touching on props such as hover bikes. Instead, established Sci-Fi conventions and a mix of genres offer an entertaining outlook on how the mafia might take advantage of technology in the future. By eliminating the problem before it has sprouted, scientific advances in the field allows the black market to play God, deciding on who will live and when they will die.
The film does not set out to break new ground or provide us with a mediation on a possible future; it does deserve a blockbuster film of the year award. Beautifully shot with slow motion sequences and laced with a kinesis that crisscrosses time-lines, Looper races towards the end which favorably, sees our hero redeem himself and make the supreme sacrifice, ensuring, not one child, but the whole human race is saved.
Sal Kapoor
Bringing you the latest and best from the movie world.
