Looper (2012)

Director: Rian Johnson

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent into the past, where a hired gun awaits – someone like Joe – who one day learns the mob wants to ‘close the loop’ by sending back Joe’s future self for assassination.

Time travel hasn’t been invented yet, but it would be in the future. Therefore, people from the future will be able to travel to the past. This is essentially the premise for ‘Looper’.

I always have issues with time travel movies. Somehow not so much with time travel into the future, but travelling from the future to the past and altering events. Fair enough, the past already happened, but by the time ‘Looper’ ends, you’ll have more questions than answers.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an assassin – or Looper – in the present (well, the future’s past). Targets from the future are being sent back to the past for loopers to eliminate. ‘Closing the loop’ is when a Looper is no longer needed, and his own self from the future is being sent back to be assassinated…by himself. He gets a fat paycheck, and then knows he has 30 years to live still. Not going through with the assassination – and the target escapes – is called letting your loop run. In this instance, the officials from the future will come for you…

With the film being narrated as it moves along – and with clever editing – it is easier to follow the complex premise. It does get complicated, though, when you meet yourself from the future, and start interacting. This is when I started raising an eyebrow. What happens when you kill your older self? Is it considered suicide? Delayed suicide…!!! Yeah, right, it makes no sense no matter how cleverly they try to explain it.

Joe learns of a guy called The Rainmaker from the future responsible for ‘closing the loops’. Now the older Joe starts looking for the Rainmaker in the present – his past, to kill him as a child. The young Joe wants to stop the older Joe – but its the same person!! (Add hundreds of question marks here…!)

After a reasonably fast paced first act, the film significantly slows down when Sara (Emily Blunt) makes her appearance. Around that time I also started questioning the credibility of the young and old Joe having conversations. There are some amazing visuals during the final act, but with the movie’s ending, nothing makes sense and everything seemed to have been for nothing. Maybe it’s just me and my issues with time travel, but how the hell can the ending possibly be explained for it to make any sense?

‘Looper’ received 65 award nominations, winning 18, and was a box office success earning $176.5 million on a $30 million budget.

Would I watch it again? I don’t know. It made even less sense the second time around…