Looper was nothing like I expected it to be. From the trailers, I thought this was going to be your usual Bruce Willis being Bruce Willis silliness. Instead I found myself watching a movie that was strangely dark. Looper follows Joe a drug addicted hit man. His job is simple. He goes to a pre-determined location where his hit will be sent back in time. Joe completes the hit and get paid. The catch is that eventually Joe will have to close his own loop. This means future him will be sent back in time for past him to kill. When Future him manages to remove his mask, Past Joe hesitates and accidentally lets Future Him escape.
It sounds fairly standard. But where Looper excels is in its world building. This is a fully realized world dropping hints at what is happening outside the plot. The cinematography also complements the world. The style is clearly influenced by film noir and neo noir, spending a lot of time in the dark grimy rainy streets and then offsetting them with bright over-saturated shots of the country.
The most distracting part of this film was Joseph Gordon Levitt’s chin. Since he was supposed to be a young Bruce Willis, they used prosthetics to change his face a little bit. He was still clearly JGL… but there was just something off about him. Whenever his face was on screen, I found myself trying to figure out exactly what they changed about his face.
Once I got over my initial shock Looper was a lot of fun to watch. It’s a great well contained scifi flick.
