Looper is the little sci-fi movie I’ve been wanting to see
all year. It doesn’t have grandiose
ambition but instead takes a single conceit and works it into a clever,
engaging two-hour cinema experience that teaseses the sci-fi-minded to
daydream what-ifs.
The strength here is Rian Johnson’s screenplay, as artful and precise as a music box. In the future, if a criminal guy does't like someone, they send that person back in time, where execution awaits at the hands of
a Looper, a killer who gone back in time to do this work. However, Loopers must
eventually kill their older selves, and sometimes this rule causes problems. When Young Seth refuses to kill Old Seth, gang
members capture the younger boy and carve an address into his arm which then
shows up as a scar on the arm of the Old Seth, summoning the older man to his death.
It’s a grim scene as Old Seth experiences broken bones and missing
appendages as he tries to get to the address, but it’s perfectly part of the time travel logic of Johnson’s music
box. The present affects the future, so when Old Joe starts to
lose a clear idea of his (future) wife, an astute viewer will pick that up as
foreshadowing about something that will happen in the future.
In addition to the time travel conceit that Johnson manages
so adroitly, Looper putters right along with suspense from several sources. What’s the gang going to do to the two Joes? Will Old Joe be able to save his wife….and
the same question: Will he kill the Rainmaker before the latter becomes a crime
monster of the future? And since we’ve
already seen that the present affects the future, what will the future look
like after Young and Old Joe have had their climatic encounter? All these narrative questions keep you
plugged into this fun, smart sci-fi movie.
Looper isn’t deep, intellectual sci-fi, but it’s smart and
well-crafted. And it even manages
character development and passing cinematography along the way.
This is a worthwhile film to catch on a day when you feel like a ration
of cinematic precision.
