Mind
Blown!

WOW!!

I just saw the best sci-fi movie since Inception. Heck, it might have been better than Inception.

Looper is a real rarity, a movie about time travel that 100% makes sense and where the underlying time travel theory holds up throughout the entire film. You do not walk out puzzled by the time travel paradoxes that happened. It all works and, more than just a lame plot device, the time travel and possibilities it opens become a central theme for the film.

I am not going to get into the plot too much. All you need to know is explained in the first 5 minutes of the movie -- Time travel has been invented 30 years in the future, but has been outlawed. Still, mobsters in the future are illegally using time travel as a way to dispose of the bodies of people they want to bump off. They send the unwanted person back in time and an assassin quickly kills the person. These assassins are called Loopers and they are leading a good life with plenty of money because they have made a dangerous deal. The deal is, in 30 years the mob will kill you (to keep you from talking about all the killings you did for them) by sending you back in time and having you shoot yourself. Thus, you "close you own loop," which is why they are known as Loopers. Does that make sense?

Joseph Gordon Levitt is a Looper who botches the job when the time comes to kill his future self, played by Bruce Willis. By the way, the makeup folks gave JGL a fake nose (it is not noticeable -- looks perfect) to make him look more like future Bruce. What's more, JGL does this squinty thing with his eyes that looks exactly like Willis. It is really well done and I think you can buy them as different versions of the same person.



Unlike many futuristic sci-fi films, there is not a lot of special effects and cool future gadgets. For the most part, the future is a bleaker and more violent version of the present -- which is fine because it allows the movie to focus on the characters and the complex but satisfying story at the core of the film. By the way, the story is almost two completely different tales. For the first half of the movie, it feels a bit like an action/chase kind of film. But, in the second half, it really slows down and becomes more of an emotional drama. It takes a confident filmmaker to make this transition, but writer/director Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) pulls it off with ease. I think this film really announces Johnson as someone to watch going forward. I am dying to see what he will come up with next because Looper is so brilliantly told.

A piece of me is dying to talk with all of you about some of the incredible plot devices and developments in the film, but you are much better off not knowing what is going to happen and experiencing it "cleanly." Once the movie opens, we can have a spoilerific discussion that I am sure we will all enjoy.

Ok, I have prattled on enough without saying much of anything other than WOW! I'll stop now. Enjoy!



By the way, though this is an R rated film that includes some nudity, violence, and drug use, I would not call it a 'hard R.' Both my 15 year old and 13 year old sons saw it and it was nothing they could not handle. It is not at all gratuitous in its use of violence or nudity -- I would say almost all of it is important to the plot. As an aside, both my kids loved it!

-Jason "this is now at the top of my Best of 2012 list ahead of End of Watch, Avengers, Haywire, and Lawless... and yes I liked all those films more than I liked Beasts of the Southern Wild and The Master" Evans