Looper (2012)

The basic idea of Looper is reasonably easy to grasp. Time-travel is invented at some point in the future and then immediately outlawed. It’s used by gangsters of the future to dispose of their unwanted bodies, by sending people back in time to be killed by loopers – men hand-picked to be hit-men. Being a looper is well-paid and seemingly quite glamorous, but it comes with the rather large caveat that the loopers themselves will be killed off in 30 years’ time. But that apparently appeals to the live fast – die young type, and they don’t seem short of recruits.

The problem is, when in 30 years you’re sent back in time to be killed, you’re killed by yourself. The killing of your future self is known as ‘closing your loop’ and comes with a lot of money and freedom to live the rest of your life as you see fit. As long as you actually kill your future self, and don’t let them go – it all goes wrong for you if you do that!

And that’s where it gets complicated. Suddenly we end up with multiple versions of the same character, and multiple versions of events in time running in parallel. Even after serious thought and lots of discussion, these different strands still don’t seem to link together very well. I’m still not properly sure what happened or how certain people know certain things or even what order things happen in.

So if you want to watch this film I can only recommend one thing – don’t think too much! If you don’t think too much, and you just accept what’s going on as it's presented to you, Looper really is a very enjoyable film. Some bits are better than others, for example there’s a rather shabby time-sequence-montage-thing in the middle, but there is a fantastic, horrifying, amazing part reasonably early on where a future person’s body is changing in front of their eyes to reflect what’s currently happening to their younger self. A bit of a head fuck but oh so fascinating.

Another impressive thing about the film is how they managed to get Joseph Gordon-Levitt to look like a young Bruce Willis. The two men are completely different in every possible visual characteristic, but with a little bit of prosthetic make-up and a very good side-ways smirk by Gordon-Levitt it works – its magic!

The first third of this film is brilliant, and sets itself up to be an epic, but it all just falls away after that. From the first time you go ‘hang on – what?’ it gradually loses your interest, and instead of just being able to absorb it, too much of your brain is trying to un-pick problems and reorganise time. Reorganising time is exhausting.

Watch it, definitely watch it. But don’t think too much!