Brilliant scifi crime thriller

Rating: 9/10 (13 October 2012)

Disclaimer first- i am a sucker for time travel movies. Ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger's T101 strode on the screen from the distant future in 1984's The Terminator, the fascinating possibilities and impossibilities arising out of this technology has fueled billions of dollars worth sci-fi imagination. Part sci-fi and part gangster flick, Rian Johnson's Looper is easily the best original, non remake time- travel movie in decades- there i have said it.
Mostly set in Kansas with a bit of China and Europe thrown in, Looper takes place in two time streams- 2044 and 2074. Time travel has been discovered by 2074 but declared illegal- only the mob has access to it and they use it rather creatively to settle scores. It is very difficult to kill someone in 2074 due to body tagging etc so the mob effectively uses time travel to send their enemies 30 years in the past to be blasted to bits by the Loopers, a group of assassins working in the past for the future crime-lords. Complex? And after a certain point, the 2074 version of a Looper is sent to the 2044 version of himself to be executed. Thus closing the loop and retiring the assassin. More complex? Fear not, that is about it- if the effectiveness of any scifi movie is measured by its ability to take up a seemingly ludicrous idea and get the audience involved without questioning its logic, then Looper is well and truly a blast, just like the blunderbuss used by the Loopers.
Joe Simmons, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt is working as a looper dispatching enemies of his - leads the high life, has a stripper girlfriend and looking forward to his retirement in Paris. One fine day, he is faced with his own future self, played by the now ubiquitous Bruce Willis, as his target- he hesitates and sparks a chain of events that will determine his future existence in this world, along with ramifications for the crime syndicates in the future. Gordon Levitt has played the side character in numerous hits and he still may not have the charisma to carry a film on his own yet, but in Looper he takes on a far more challenging role- sheds his boyish charm to take up an action hero role. The amount of makeup they have put on him to make him look like a younger Bruce Willis makes him almost unrecognizable from his usual self. Speaking of Willis- no one, i repeat, no one in the industry still shoots off a gun with more malevolent joy than Bruce. He is super as a tortured assassin from the future, pining away for his murdered wife, willing to kill children to right his wrongs, and he still looks bad-ass enough to take down 20 man single-handedly, like 25 years ago in Die Hard. Emily Blunt as the mother of a child to whom there is more than meets the eye, and Jeff Daniels as the 2044 gang leader put in excellent performances too.
Director Rian Johnson deserves tons of accolades- he has made a stylish action movie, with creativity, originality and energy, and at the same time it is thought provoking, affecting. This movie is not about overpowering effects, though the ones that are there are pretty awesome- it is more about people, and he gets us to care for each of them, whether the telekinetic child Cid, or the unstable killer in Kid Blue. There are scenes of gruesome violence that appear poetically along with sequences that intentionally slow down the narrative for the audience to absorb the essence. There are shades of classics such as Terminator and Bladerunner along with Ron Howard's gangster epic, Road to Perdition, but all put together, Looper is one brilliant scifi crime drama thriller that is a must watch for scifi fans- 9/10