How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 25 September 2012
This article is a review of LOOPER. |
“You're going to kill this guy, your own self?” Sara
To many, science fiction is a purely shudder-inducing imagining of the most socially inept congregating at a STAR TREK convention in Spock ears. But the best of sci-fi, like any genre, is not soap opera and cod-techno jargon; it is the work that challenges intellects and expands imaginations. The marrying of smarts, originality and engagement, to wow (on various levels), comes along too rarely. Those thinking of dipping their cinema-going toe into arguably the most unfashionable of motion picture categories will be in for a real treat with LOOPER.
To many, science fiction is a purely shudder-inducing imagining of the most socially inept congregating at a STAR TREK convention in Spock ears. But the best of sci-fi, like any genre, is not soap opera and cod-techno jargon; it is the work that challenges intellects and expands imaginations. The marrying of smarts, originality and engagement, to wow (on various levels), comes along too rarely. Those thinking of dipping their cinema-going toe into arguably the most unfashionable of motion picture categories will be in for a real treat with LOOPER.
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Writer-director Rian Johnson has returned to the debut form of BRICK, after the stumble with the not-satisfying-enough confidence trickster caper, THE BROTHERS BLOOM. This third effort shares, with his high school gumshoe noir, a credible new universe to bathe the senses in, a hermetically sealed and detailed space to tell a disturbing and exhilarating morally grey fable – examinations of worlds rotting on a seemingly terminal scale.
It is 2042, the USA. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Joe is a “Looper”. Thirty years from 2042, time travel is invented and then immediately outlawed. However, the highest levels of criminality have harnessed it for their own ends. Unable to kill in that era, due to body tagging, those that fall foul of these organisations are sent back in time to be executed, by Loopers. These assassins are eventually ordered to have their “Loops closed” to avoid any tiresome loose ends. They are given 30 years notice to live out the rest of their lives. Loopers kill their own future selves. Perhaps creating a more humane outcome? But actually it is meant to ensure it is carried out. Nobody wants someone with future knowledge running around the place. Of course, junkie yet focused, Joe doesn’t end up terminating future-Joe (Bruce Willis). As expected, when Willis is involved, pandemonium reigns. Throw in a conspiracy theory on a macro scale, and some telekinesis, and LOOPER is one adrenaline-charged ride.
Might this share the seemingly timeless qualities of the issues raised in TWELVE MONKEYS and CHILDREN OF MEN? Maybe a Looper could tell us.