Somehow, I completely missed this film when it came out 10 years ago. I mean, I saw the commercials, but it didn’t really catch my interest. Years later I realized that Rian Johnson had a hand in Looper. Now, some people know who he is because he made a polarizing Star Wars movie. Anyways, Looper is now part of an ever-expanding list of my favorite movies.
1. Story
This one is very straightforward. One would think since this one involves time travel it would be hard to follow. Fortunately, Looper has a unique spin of time travel. We follow Joe, he’s considered a looper. A contracted killer who murders a target from the future. You see, time travel has been outlawed in the future, but a group of killers called Gat Men send the loopers criminals to be disposed.
One day, Joe is assigned to kill his future self. This is probably the most original time travel story that I’ve seen so far. The most difficult part of making a time travel movie is to not make it hard to follow. It’s extremely easy to have it be understandable, but if you try to add more layers or rules to it, the movie will just be a chore.
Give credit to Back to the Future and the last Avengers movie, it tries to streamline their time travel aspect. Here, it’s probably the most original. For one thing the film takes place in a futuristic Kansas City. Well, the only flying thing is what appears to be a motorcycle. Nevertheless, how we see time travel being used is only in the future. It doesn’t go into detail exactly how it works, but it’s really the teleportation that we see.
Just to elaborate more on the time travel aspect, I’m going to talk about my favorite scene. This is going to be hard to follow but bear with me. Joe’s friend is supposed to kill his older self, which he doesn’t. As his older self is wandering the city, he sees changes in his body. Right down to progressively losing fingers, limbs, and his nose. That moment is the main highlight of the film. It does something new to the time travel motif by introducing some body horror. Adding the inherent danger to time travel.
The last thing I want to bring up is that this film also has mutants. Well, the only power we see is that a select few can levitate objects. You would think that it’s probably the only futuristic thing in the whole story. Trust me and I’ll say that it’s an important plot point. One that gets the ball rolling when it involves the main character and his older self.
2. Joe
This is probably the first movie where it has an older version of the main character. With today’s movies involving multiverses, this one plays it straight by having Joe’s older self appear in the present. Both Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same character, but what makes it interesting is that they’re not the same. Let’s dub the present and future Joes as A and B. Joe A is very efficient as a looper and is addicted to drugs.
Joe B is set in his ways, since he’s attempting to kill the person who’s dubbed the Rainmaker. We get moments where they interact, but it’s clear that Joe A tells B that he wants to alter his future. B won’t allow him. What’s interesting is that it’s not very action oriented, meaning that A and B don’t meet up constantly and get into fights.
What they represent is an old philosophy teaching called Predetermination. I brought this up when I talked about Minority Report. To put it simply, it’s like a cause and effect, but you can’t make any changes where the cause can alter the effect. Here, Joe A is attempting to protect a mother and his son from B. Not knowing that B already has a future and doesn’t want it to change.
3. Rian Johnson
Having watched The Last Jedi and Knives Out helped me notice a recurring motif when I spotted it in Looper. One thing I noticed Johnson use is what I call an expanding flashback. What I mean by that is we get a scene of Joe B’s life before sending himself back. We see alternate looks into his life how his choice drastically changes. It’s the thing I noticed when watching both Jedi and Knives Out. How those movies use the motif is by expanding on a flashback to make it vague and then clearer in the story.
4. Overall
I love this movie. Looper is highly original with what it’s got and is one of the best film for the young director.
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