Looper

  • 2012-10-03
  • By Laurence Boyce

Stuffed full of clever ideas and mind-twisting time travel conceits, “Looper” is an intelligent sci-flick in the vein of Inception. Whilst you’ll need to keep up with some complicated ideas you’ll be rewarded with some non-stop action,  good performances and the idea that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is going to grow up to be Bruce Wills.
2044. In 30 years time-travel will be invented and technology will be used by the criminals of the future to send those they want disposed of into the past. The people who carry out these shootings are ‘Loopers.’ One of these is Joe (Gordon-Levitt) who must turn up at a location, kill the masked victim after it appears out of nowhere from the future and collect the silver attached to the body. But when one his victims turn out to be his older self (Willis) who promptly escapes, Joe finds himself involved in a race against himself and the future.

While some of the ideas in the film don’t stand up to scrutiny, there’s enough vitality and style here to make you forgive the film’s more obvious flaws. Director Rian Johnson manages to fill the film with ideas and some taut and relatively violent action sequences and – even though the second half of the movie that sees young Joe protecting a woman on a farm unbalances things – makes a film that homages many sci-fi films of the past seem fresh and exciting.
Fresh off “The Dark Knight Rises,” Gordon-Levitt continues to solidify his status as a major Hollywood player while Willis also does well managing to play what is ostensibly a villainous role.

While it sometimes feels like it’s trying to do much, “Looper” manages to be a creditable and exciting sci-fi flick that homages the past while carving out its own unique identity.

 
 

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