Intriguing and enjoyable as long as you don't take it too seriously

Rating: 7/10 (17 October 2012)

Writer/director Rian Johnson's third feature ("Brick," "The Brothers Bloom") is another mashup, of sorts, in a season full of genre hybrids. On the face of it, "Looper" brands itself as a time travel tale smack dab in the classic science fiction tradition of films like "The Butterfly Effect" (in which Ashton Kutcher goes back to the past to change the present), "The Jacket" (in which Adrien Brody goes into the future to change the present), and "Donnie Darko" (in which Jake Gyllenhaal, well, we're never quite sure where he goes or why, but he looks good doing it). Of course, there's the iconic (and quite dark for its era) "The Time Machine" and the (much lighter) "Back to the Future" franchise, both of which send the protagonists forward or backward in time to escape an unexciting and, possibly, dangerous present.
"Looper's" premise (laid out in the opening narration) is that time travel has been, or will be, invented at some point in the future. Bad guys can, thus, be sent back in time to be exterminated in the present, thereby eliminating them before they can get to be the bad guys they are to become. "Loopers" are the assassins in the present (well, 2044) who've been given the lucrative assignment of preemptively eliminating these to-be-bad guys (from 2074, follow?). As it always has been, and always will be, ethics are trumped by dollars. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it. As the movie opens, we see "Joe" (the always-dependable Joseph Gordon-Levitt) as the somebody in the process of carrying out this mission as future felons pop into view, only to be blown away seconds later in the middle of a cornfield. A Field of Nightmares, as it were. But Bruce Willis appears and, as he is wont to do, throws a major monkey wrench into the production and the story barrels off from there.
Rian Johnson's project benefits from a stellar cast, including Emily Blunt, Paul Dano. Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, and Jeff Daniels, all turning in intriguing performances that confound at every turn. Look for little Pierce Gagnon as Cid, a Damien/Omen meets Haley Joel Osment's "I see dead people" Cole as a sweet but creepy kid who steals every scene he's in, no easy task in this sea of veteran talent.
Cinematographer Steve Yedlin (who also shot Johnson's previous features) maintains a consistent style throughout, making the present day settings somewhat indistinguishable from the future, adding to the delightful confusion of the audience. The music is never obtrusive as composer Nathan Johnson's original score serves the narrative without being showy. The pace is on par with the typical thriller, as editor Bob Ducsay ensures that the action flows at a steady rate without extended periods of introspection, as the filmmakers foil every attempt on the viewer's part to calculate the machinations and solve the riddles appearing on screen.
Sci-fi morphs into action-adventure and psychological thriller as the viewer attempts to fit the puzzle pieces together. The identity of many of the characters, present and future, is a mystery -- and, as it turns out, that's really the point of it. There's plenty of eye candy, to be sure, but figuring out who's who and what they're really doing occupies most of the brain throughout "Looper." Johnson had a choice here. One option was to make the narrative so confounding that, a la "Inception," people would be scratching their heads afterward, at the risk of them becoming disgusted at what they view as self-indulgence on the part of the filmmakers. The other option was to push the movie ever so slightly in that direction but, with a bit of humor and well placed tongue-in-cheek, not take itself so seriously as to annoy the audience into writing it off as a lost two hours (and it is long at 118 minutes). "Looper" walks a fine line between the two but, in the end, is more feast than famine, putting it in the category of films that must be seen again to be appreciated.