Probably the most overlooked aspect of a film during its review period is its legacy. What, if any, impact will the film have on projects that have not even reached a script stage yet? Obviously this shouldn’t be applied to every movie that graces our screens nobody has likely sat down and discussed the lasting impact on the industry of Baby’s Day Out, for example but certain pieces, through critical or commercial success or failure do leave lasting marks on the filmmaking landscape as a whole.
Regardless of what you think of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, it was an astonishing success, both critically and commercially. Five-star reviews and a long run in the box-office chart are what every film aims for, but Inception’s success had more far-reaching implications. Before then, the general consensus was that sci-fi films could be action-packed special effects bonanzas or slower-paces brain stimulators, but not both. Nolan proved with Inception that this wasn’t the case, and that you could successfully marry intelligently layered narrative with sweeping action set-pieces and it is now, with films like Looper, that we are seeing the results of this legacy.
In Rian Johnson’s Looper, the dreams of Inception are substituted for good old fashioned time-travel, although with plenty of twists and turns along the way. In the near-future Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper, a very special kind of assassin. Thirty years ahead from his time, time-travel is real but illegal, used only by criminal operations to dispose of unwanted individuals. The out-of-favour are sent back to a specific time and place where a Looper is waiting to blow them away with a futuristic blunderbuss, apparently specifically designed to look awesome. On an apparently routine contract, Joe finds himself face-to-face with his future-self (Bruce Willis), who promptly escapes, leaving the timeline more than a little wobbly.
That synopsis and the film’s accompanying trailers and posters would leave you believing that this amounts to little more than a standard chase movie, albeit with the bells and whistles of time-travel attached, but Looper is so much more than that. It asks of the audience one of the most fundamental moral questions about time travel and delivers harsh but cutting truths about how far we, as humans, are willing to go in the pursuit of that question.
Looper’s main strength lies in its unpredictability. Having fooled us into believing that it he’s merely made a sci-fi version of the Fugitive, Johnson pulls the rug from under our feet and flings us into territory not normally covered by your standard mainstream movie. Indeed, there is a moment around the halfway point that lets the viewer know, in no uncertain terms, that all bets are off and that we as an audience came to the wrong movie if we were looking to stay inside our comfort zone. The story never loosens its grip for a second, and by the end the audience I was in was left visibly shaken but heartily satisfied.
From a performance perspective, we are in elite company. Willis manages to retain moral ambiguity whilst simultaneously kicking more ass than he has since the mid-90s. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is razor sharp as Joe, the fact that he’s been made up to look more like Willis’ younger self is noticeable, but not enough to be off putting, and actually contributes nicely to the overall feel of the character. Special praise however, must go to Emily Blunt & youngster Pierce Gagnon as a mother/son combo caught in the middle of this time clash. Blunt has proved her versatility before and here again, she proves impossible to typecast as a sassy all-American farm girl. Gagnon however, is a force. Both terrified and terrifying in equal measure, the incredibly mature performance produced by the boy is the standout feature of the movie.
There has been comparison from other reviewers to everything from Inception and Terminator to Bruce Willis’ other time-travelling mind-bender, 12 Monkeys, and to be sure, there are elements of all in there, but in terms of style and aesthetics, this holds more resemblance to Joss Whedon’s 2005 cult piece Serenity. This is thinking man’s sci-fi. Sure there are plenty of whizzes and bangs, but underneath it all is a fundamental dissection of how we, as groups, as communities, as individuals, shape the future with our actions, both big and small. Serenity focussed on the power of the people to beat corruption in organisation, but here, the mirror is turned on us. What kind of world are our choices creating and, should it go badly, who will bear the consequences?
Looper is an exciting film for so many reasons; razor sharp direction, fantastic performances and plenty of good ideas combine to build something very, very special indeed.
Overall Verdict: Fit to be considered alongside Blade Runner, Alien and 2001 in the pantheon of all-time great sci-fi, Rian Johnson has produced that rarest of things, an intelligent, layered future-world that can be appreciated philosophically or just for being hella cool. And yes, the ball is most definitely back in Christopher Nolan’s court.
Reviewer: Alex Hall