Today's Review: Looper

I had hardly heard a thing about Looper before I went to see it. You could say I was out of the loop. Yes, I'm doing puns today.

Looper is set in the near future, in which time travel has been invented in the near future, 30 years away in fact. Problem is, when time travel was invented, it was instantly banned due to all the loopy stuff that can result from it. The future also has handy tracking devices installed in people's bodies, so when gangsters need to get rid of someone, they need to use their well hidden illegal time machines to send them back in time 30 years to be disposed of by "Loopers". Joseph Gordon Levitt stars as Joe, a Looper who is thrown for a loop when one of his marks takes off, leading him on a twisty, turny, loop the loop thrill ride as he uncovers some truths about the future and himself.

Don't like time travel all that much? Does it twist your brain into loops? Don't worry, this movie doesn't want to explain time travel to you. Every time the conversation strays into that territory, a character immediately puts a halt to it. It's good to have some grasp of timelines and basic rules and effects of time travel, but really it's just a driving force behind the story occurring in the present time in the movie. The future is barely seen. we merely see a couple of glimpses. It may seem like they missed a trick with that, but the story of Looper is so engaging and well planned that I didn't find myself wishing to see the future. I'm glad the whole thing is open ended and left up to the imagination.

There are very few characters in this thing as well, but they're all pretty great. Gordon Levitt is as amazing as always, although his face looks really weird, for reasons that become apparent. Emily Blunt turns in a good performance too as a farmer and single mother, putting on a surprisingly good American accent. The young Pierce Gagnon is fantastic as mysterious young boy Cid too. Plus there's Bruce Willis. You can't go wrong with him.

Looper is a fantastic dark, low key sci-fi movie. Not everything is explained, there's just enough to understand what's going on, with everything else left for the viewer to figure out. It has some great, multi-layered characters with changing loyalties and agendas, and I can't really find fault with it. Looper is probably one of my favourite movies this year, and there have been quite a few great movies.

My rating: 5/5