Looper
In the year 2072 disposing of a dead body is very difficult, so, when the mafias of the future need to make someone vanish they use the illegal technology of time travel to send their victims back in time 30 years where they are immediately shot and killed by someone known as a “looper.†The bodies of the departed are then disposed of leaving no trace. The catch being that in order to keep things quiet the mafia will eventually “close the loop†by forcing a looper to eventually kill their future self and dispose of their own body. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, and he’s just been given the assignment to kill his future self (Bruce Willis); but, before he can even get a shot off, the wily older version of himself manages to escape sending a cascading chain of events off course. Now it’s up to young Joe to stop his older self from making matters worse before mobster Abe (Jeff Daniels) catches them both and before the innocent mother and son, Sara and Cid (Emily Blunt and Pierce Gagnon), are killed in the process.
Sounds confusing on paper, but well thought out time travel flicks are often hard to wrap your mind around at first; fortunately, writer/director Rian Johnson, has done a fantastic job thinking through the plausibility and accuracy of how such a possible scenario could come into being– revealing just the right amount of detail, carefully constructing suspense, and telling a well spun story to spark our imagination and ask “what if?†Gordon-Levitt and Willis seem to do a fine job blending into one man, albeit it’s really Gordon-Levitt mugging Willis here, but the two actually fit together nicely. Except for the prosthetic makeup for Gordon-Levitt, it’s actually distracting and really un-necessary. Once again Emily Blunt miraculously disappears into her character and brings her “A†game to the plate. And, bit parts from Paul Dano and Piper Perabo add some interesting colour. There are a lot of moving parts here, and the film does start to feel a little long in the last few minutes, still, this one’s worth the price of admission! Looper is rated R.