Face Your Future; Fight Your Past. This is the tagline of Looper, a violent, assassin-driven alternative to Back To The Future. In it, a man from the future tries to change his past without getting killed by his younger self.
Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an assassin. It’s not a hard job; he’s a Looper, which means that when the mob 30 years in the future has a target, they kidnap him, bag his head and tie his arms, set him on his knees, and send him into the past where the Looper is waiting to shoot him point-blank. All Joe has to do is be in the field when the mark appears, pull the trigger, and collect his silver bars as payment.
The twist in this somewhat entertaining shoot-em-up sci-fi thriller is that when his future self (Bruce Willis) is sent back as the target, he escapes, making both men targets of the mob boss (Jeff Daniels) Abe, who came from the future to set up the Looper program, and lives in the past to make sure it runs smoothly.
But what happens when the characters consist of a guy hell-bent on changing the past to save his wife in the future, pitted against his younger self — a Looper — who doesn’t care about anyone, including even his future self, with a mother (Emily Blunt) thrown in the mix who is against all odds trying to make up for abandoning her child and ensuring his future safety? You get a bigger and better concept than the actual film itself.
The entire cast delivers strong performances, but the film, written and directed by Rian Johnson, lacks compelling connections between its characters and the audience—I just wasn’t drawn in, and I love these types of plots. The film looks good, but something indefinable keeps it from being the mind-blowing experience it was meant to be.
Good acting and a clever script garner 2 ½ stars.
