Review: "Looper"

I usually avoid dystopian films and films that involve time travel.  But my family wanted to see this one so I went along to see Looper.  I noticed a few clichés, a few plot contrivances, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I even found the ending redemptive (but I won’t tell you what it is!).

The thing with time travel stories is…well:  To begin with, causality.   Going back in time, you inevitably change something.  Nowadays, knowing about the “Butterfly Effect”…well; the “new future” created becomes downright unpredictable, because of Chaos Theory.  The Future You that has traveled back to change the past is now itself changed –and in unpredictable ways!  You are not the person you were, you probably can’t even imagine the person you now are!

But that’s all Speculative Physics.

So the premise of Looper is that an aging man from the future (Old Joe, played by Bruce Willis) is sent back to the time of his early manhood.  He’s supposed to be killed by his younger self (Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), but isn’t.  Instead the younger and older “selves” set off to kill someone who becomes a monster (you can say, a “Hitler,”) in future times and is a danger to both of them.

There’s a lot of killing; the younger self is being paid to kill off the condemned of the future.  This is a dystopian film, so society—now and in the future—involves a lot of squalor, joyless kicks/sex/drugs, exploitation, misery, and killing—not my favorite things to watch.

But (might I contrast this with Inception?) there is humanity in this film—which is why I liked it.  There is more than killing and plot twists.  I sympathize with the main characters.  I care about Joe.  I care about the woman (Sara, played by Emily Blunt) he meets in his quest to find the future monster.  And I care about her child (Sid, played by Pierce Gagnon).

And I liked the ending (which I’m not revealing).  I liked it because it involved more than just killing off one more “evil” character—it involved something different, more thoughtful, more humane, more compassionate.

So—in spite of not liking dystopian, time-travel films, I liked Looper.  And I recommend it.