SMALLS CLOSES HIS LOOP WITH LOOPER

In 2044 time travel has not yet been invented, but in 30 years (the year 2074) it will be. Once it has been invented time travel is almost immediately outlawed, so the only people that use it are the mob. In the future, when they grab one of their targets they use time travel to ship the person back to 2044 where a gun man called a Looper will be waiting to kill the person and dispose of the body (why send it back in time? because in the future every body is tracked, so it's not as easy to secretly dispose of a body). Eventually, a Looper will have their future self shipped back to them to kill. This erases any trace of the illegal activities done by the person. This process is called closing your loop.

In Looper, we follow a young Looper named Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who is living the enjoyable but lonely life of a Looper. When he is sent his future self (Bruce Willis) to kill, he hesitates and this leads to his Loop managing to get the one up on him. Now, with the Gats (trained hit men) on his tail, it's a race against time as he attempts to close his loop first and survive.

Looper is another phenomenal outing by the talented Rian Johnson. This time around he sets his sights on the time travel genre, and the result is something thrilling, surprising, and totally unexpected. He seems to have a knack for coaxing superb performances out of his cast, he did so in Brick and he does so again in Looper.

Joseph Gordon Levitt puts on another one of his best performances to date as the somewhat oily and punk-ish but still human Joe. Throughout the film, we get to watch as the character transforms from a man who is all about serving himself into a man that is willing to put others before himself (honestly, even when Joe was only looking out for himself I was still rooting him on more than the Willis character....maybe that's just me though). For the role of Joe, Levitt underwent a physical transformation so that he would look like a younger version of Willis' character....and the effect is pretty surreal. Willis' and Levitt's interactions in the film are fun and interesting.  The scene where him and Willis sit down to eat at a diner will make your head spin in a good way. It can be hard to wrap your mind around the idea that these two characters are the same person, but Looper sells this notion beautifully. For me, Levitt's acting was what really sold me on the idea that he is a younger Willis. There are scenes where I paused and thought, holy shit, that's Bruce Willis....pretty cool.

Bruce Willis is back in Die Hard mode here as older Joe. Despite him and younger Joe being the same exact person, both couldn't be more different. Older Joe has gone thru quite a few changes in the span of 30 years. Older Joe has committed himself to a very specific goal while in the past (and yes, he is indeed stuck here....since Time Travel has not yet been invented in 2044, there's no way he can go back home), a goal that could easily change the shape of the future. Bruce Willis plays a good monster here (not gonna say much else), and words cannot describe my joy at seeing him back with a machine gun in his hands.

Emily Blunt plays Sara, a single mother that agrees to hide young Joe from the Gats. She has a fluent and believable southern accent, and is beautiful if not a bit old. She puts on a pretty great performance here (quite possibly one of the best of her career) as a single mother that will do anything to protect her son. She is a believable character, and I enjoyed getting to spend some time with her.

Pierce Gagnon plays Cid, the 5 year old son of Sara. Pierce announces his arrival into the acting world with an explosion of awesomeness (yes, I know that's not a real word, get off my back). He acts with a grown up maturity that really surprised me.  Cid has a special ability, and the scenes dedicated to what he can do with this are thrilling, shocking, and frightening in all the right ways. He is creepy, but adorable and human too. I hope to see this kid cast in more films.

Cast in a supporting role is Jeff Daniels as Abe, a man from the future that is sent back to manage the Loopers. He plays a sizable role but isn't in the film much. He acts as a fatherly figure to the Loopers, but also is a man to be feared. Noah Segan plays Kid Blue, one of the Gats that is on the hunt for both Joe's. He may be another supporting role, but he is a fun character to watch as he is continually beat up and fucks up his job throughout most of the film. Piper Perabo also appears in a few scenes as Suzie, a kind hearted stripper.

Another aspect of this film I've got to mention is the superb soundtrack by Nathan Johnson. The score here perfectly complements the film. It's quite unlike anything I have ever heard, as Nathan actually walked around New Orleans recording random sounds and objects and then incorporating them into the score itself. Safe to say, the soundtrack is well worth a buy on iTunes or at your local CD store.

I also enjoyed the vision of the future the film has. In Looper, 2044 is a mess, most people live in poverty and only a select few are wealthy....including Loopers. It's interesting to watch JGL riding around in a fancy sports car, zooming past poor and starving citizens. The future looks very much like today, except for a few things like hover bikes, new cool looking trains, and a mutation that leads to a small percent of the population having a special ability.

The trailer for Looper (and my plot synopsis) would have you believe that Looper is primarily a film about time travel, but in reality the story here is so much deeper than that. Looper has elements of sci-fi, classic gangster films, noir, time travel epics, action/adventure films, and the list goes on and on and on (and what's more, it excels beautifully at each of these elements...you can tell Rian had a lot of love for these genres and that he did his research). Looper, however, isn't just satisfied with showing you a good time...it wants you to think too, to think about the consequences and effects of time travel (the ideas the film has about time travel and it's effects are fun and intriguing), about the character's motivations, what is right/what is wrong, and so on and so forth. While Looper's scenes of action (as teased in the trailer) are bombastic and thrilling, most of the film is focused on these characters we are introduced to and how they grow throughout the course of the film.

Looper is a film that's hard to define, there are so many different genres mixed into this beautiful little thriller that it defies definition. I guess I could best sum Looper up as a thinking man's sci-fi action film. Looper is an elegant film that's also some of the most fun you're likely to have in a movie theater this year. Expect action, mind-bending ideas, time travel, gun play, sci-fi goodness, nudity,  and much much more. I could go on talking about this film all day, but I've got to wrap this review up sometime, so I'll end with this:  Looper is a masterfully crafted film that is well worth your time and money, it's easily one of the best of the year.

4.5 STARS