Visionary writer/director Rian Johnson goes all big-budget Hollywood for his latest. Only, it’s not that big a budget. And it’s not really all that Hollywood either…
Be warned: some SPOILERS throughout.
Nature vs. nurture. It’s an argument that’s fueled many a late-night coffee discussion: if you could somehow go back in time and murder Adolf Hitler as a child, would you do it? Could you murder a child if it meant stopping one of the greatest atrocities in human history? Or would it be better to take the child out of that situation and into another - one where they would grow up not into a monster, but a functioning member of society. That eternal dichotomy is just one element of many at the heart of Rian Johnson’s latest film Looper, a virtuoso sci-fi thriller that never settles on just one intriguing idea (many of which are enough to carry an entire movie on their own), but instead piles them all together in one of the most exciting and fascinating movies of the year.
The basic conceit is that in the year 2074, time travel has been invented and almost immediately made illegal. The crime syndicates of the future immediately see the perfect way to exploit the new invention: anyone they need killed, they merely send back in time to the year 2044 to be executed and disposed of, leaving behind no trace of evidence. The assassins who do the killing are called “loopers,” who are paid to literally wait in the middle of nowhere to shoot their hooded, gagged and bound targets that materialize out of thin air. It’s a cushy lifestyle, but not terribly forward-thinking. See, since time-travel is illegal, the loopers themselves eventually have to be sent back in time and executed… by themselves. Once that happens, they receive a hefty payday and retire early - live it up for the next thirty years until their clock runs out and they’re sent back in time to pay the piper. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Joe is one such character, although he seems a little bit brighter than his fellow loopers (which isn’t saying much, considering these are people who gladly sign up for a thirty-year death contract). He saving up the money he gets from all his “loops,” for one, storing up a small fortune for the day he kills himself and starts his early retirement. The only problem is, when his future-self finally does show up, he’s not bound and gagged like his other victims - Joe looks into the eyes of his thirty-years-older self (played by Bruce Willis), and it causes him to hesitate before pulling the trigger. That causes Old Joe to get away, creating quite a conundrum for the present-day Joe, who is immediately hunted down by his bosses for not completing his job.
Johnson creates a future that feels like the natural extension of where we are now, populating it with details that feel very carefully thought-out, but never fully explained - making the movie refreshingly devoid of exposition. It’s quite a feat to make a science fiction film these days with so little exposition (even Inception - one of the most exciting and original sci-fi films of the last decade - suffered from a dearth of expository dialogue throughout), but Johnson pulls it off, sprinkling his film with an impressive array of wonderful little details. Since the plot never stops to explain any of them, they feel like a natural part of the world - allowing Johnson to have some fun at their expense. Consider the hover-cycles, a not-uncommon sight in futuristic science fiction films. Here they are wholly impractical - difficult to start, essentially useless. They’re the future’s version of Hummers - something that only douche-bags with too much money on their hands buy to show off. iPhones have given way to small, glass communicators; keyboards and touch-screens have been replaced with some form of motion-sensor tech; drugs are taken through eye-droppers - all of these elements are dropped into the world, creating a wholly-believable future without having to stop to explain it all.
Which is a good thing, ultimately, as the film gets all the more time to devote to its complex labyrinth of a plot - one that never settles into any predictable rhythm. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film where I didn’t at least have an inkling of where the plot might go, but about halfway through Looper I realized I had no idea what direction the story would take next. Johnson pisses all over the three-act nonsense that Hollywood is so proud of (or at least the patented Robert McKee/Syd Field version), and that’s trotted out again and again in a spiral of increasingly uninspired, myopic bullshit. It’s undiscovered country; open season for Johnson to go to town on, and the result is an exhilarating experience that becomes increasingly rare to find on the big screen with each passing year. It’s a trailblazing effort, and in casting Gordon-Levitt and Willis (along with an able cast of performers like Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels and Garret Dillahunt), Johnson has the perfect vehicles with which to explore his many ideas.
Gordon-Levitt gives one of the absolute best performances of his already impressive career, completely disappearing into the role of Young Joe. Some eerily effective make-up prosthetics make him resemble a young Willis, but it’s the details where Gordon-Levitt captures the essence of John McClane and Butch Coolidge, through similar vocal patterns and mannerisms. But the performance is a lot more than just mimicry, and Gordon-Levitt gets to the heart of the character without ever feeling forced or manipulative.
With Bruce Willis, we seem to either get interested and lackadaisical or completely uninterested and lackadaisical. The last few years Willis has pretty much shown up to cash his paycheck and be Bruce Willis, but here seems re-energized by Johnson’s script. He gets a really monumental character to play, and in doing so reminds us why he’s Bruce Willis. When Old Joe first shows up, we at first think we’re going to get a story where the older version of a character comes back to tell his young self what for (which he gets to do in a rather fantastic diner scene), but the ever-shifting nature of the movie means that the purpose of Old Joe is not what we first think. Willis’ character makes some hard, unforgivable choices throughout the film, and although he at first seems wiser, he winds up not being quite as ethical as his younger self. Johnson also has the good sense to realize that, if you’re going to have Bruce Willis in your movie, you might as well have him shoot up a bunch of dudes - which he promptly does, in many spectacular shoot-outs and set-pieces.
Emily Blunt doesn’t come in until about the halfway point, but her single-mom farmer character is crucial to the overall plot. To say how would be saying too much, but suffice to say she’s a part of the film’s biggest gear-change, where it goes from time-travel thriller into something else entirely. Blunt is just as great as her male co-stars, giving us a formerly damaged character who’s since been able to pick herself up and put the pieces of her life together again *.
There’s so much more to chew over: the unsettling, utterly fantastic death scene early on (if you’ve seen the movie, you know which one I’m talking about); the reflective, complex structure; the futuristic blunderbuss guns; “the Rainmaker”; the jaw-dropping finale; the fact that the whole story just might be a superhero origin in disguise…
All the elements come together in the end for an utterly engrossing, completely satisfying whole. Suffice to say, we need more movies like Looper.
* Special mention must also be made of the young actor playing Blunt’s son, Pierce Gagnon, who is remarkably talented despite his young age.
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