Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis (Alan Markfield/Sony Pictures)
Early in Rian Johnson’s baffling, wonderful, time-jumping thriller Looper, a gangland boss advises the protagonist—and all of us, really—to not try to expend too much effort on figuring out the plot’s temporal kinks.
“This time travel shit fries your brain like an egg.”
It’s solid advice, but, boy, does Johnson scramble us good in this one. After Brick, his noir in a California high school, and The Brothers Bloom, an underappreciated but delightfully batty caper flick, the 38-year-old filmmaker is doling out science fiction with consequences.
Set in a skyscraping midwestern city in 2044, Looper follows around Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an executioner working for a crime syndicate in an even more distant future. Time travel doesn’t exist in Joe’s era, but it does 30 years hence, and in that day—where it is outlawed upon invention—crime bosses skate evidence trails by dumping their victims in the past. Joe stands across from a tarp in a lonely cornfield. A hooded body, zapped across the space-time continuum, pops in and is immediately blasted away by Joe’s shotgun.
People in the looper trade live well for the mid-21st century, a time Johnson depicts as even more disheveled than today. Vagrants gun each other down and no one seems to mind. The line between police and gangster is rather thin. But little else has changed: Clothes, cars and guns all look in 2044 how they do in 2012. There are hoverbikes, but they’re lousy rides, a detail that will be important to remember later.
And Joe has a nice life, as does his buddy Seth, a fellow looper played by an especially jumpy Paul Dano.
The one tradeoff loopers agree to, though, is that their final kills are themselves, returned from the future as a way to “close the loop” on their grisly deeds. Failure to kill one’s older self is a very bad decision, and the way Seth’s senior version meets his end is a grisly twist on Marty McFly’s disappearing hand.
Then Old Joe shows up in the form of Bruce Willis. Much has been made of the steps the filmmakers took to make the wiry Gordon-Levitt resemble a boulder like Willis. In his natural state, the younger actor looks nothing like Willis, but a heavy dose of prosthetic makeup—including a fake nose—tries to bridge the phenotypic gap. It’s a reach, but Gordon-Levitt makes up for it by aping Willis’ cold, sneering demeanor, but without slipping into an outright imitation.
But Old Joe appears unbound and ungagged, a clear indicator he was not forced through the time machine by the future gangsters. And he is not happy to see the gun barrel of his younger self. A brawl turns into a chase and finally a bit of exposition about Old Joe’s business in the past: To hunt down the baddies that will eventually do him in.
As Old Joe, Willis is all wistfulness and menace, but in a rather unique position to get satisfaction. Johnson gives us an extended sequence on how Joe’s life played (or will play) out; I’ll only say that as rough as 2044 is, things are even worse by 2074.
Young Joe’s pursuit of Old Joe eventually leads him to a farm, of all places, owned by a woman named Sarah, played by a remarkably steely Emily Blunt. That the farm is 20th-century vintage is just another of Johnson’s visual tricks. Some modern agricultural equipment has been invented, but for the most part, farming in the future is done the same way as it is today.
Besides time travel in the distant future, Looper’s other principal invention is the discovery that a segment of the human population has developed telekinetic ability. For most, it’s only as powerful as a cheap party trick, but it eventually pays off with a memorable scene of body horror involving Sarah’s son, Cid (a frightening young discovery named Pierce Gagnon).
As a visual artist, Johnson is unsparing. Joe, before being forced to go on the run by his older counterpart’s appearance, kills a lot of people, and Johnson does not let us flinch. The plot is mind-bogglingly ambitious, but Gordon-Levitt, Willis, Blunt and a gruesomely funny Jeff Daniels are up to the challenge of making sense of it all.
It’s also a refreshing take on the time travel film, which is normally imbued with ho-hum optimism about what lies ahead for human society. There are no flying DeLoreans or inspirational humpback whales here. Of all the tricks Johnson pulls off, painting a believably grim future is the one that truly completes the circuit.
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Looper
Written and directed by Rian Johnson
With Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels.
Rated R for some nudity, a fair bit of drug use, lots of blood and a colossal mindfuck.
Opens today everywhere.
