Review: 'Looper 'is worth engaging with

Film: Looper
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels
Rating: ***1/2

There might be some good jobs left in 2044, but being a looper or the killer of men from the future (where time-travel is officially banned) sent to the past by crimelords, isn't one of them. When the contract expires, so does he (well the older version himself from 2074 , technically!). And who kills them? Why the younger version of the looper himself.

When the hardened future version (Willis) of the wayward Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is beamed back, he has no intention of being shot by his former punk self, and proceeds to make the best of his voyage to the past to kill the enigmatic 'Rainmaker', a being who, in 30 years time will take away everything he holds dear. In the meantime, Joe the younger, now a drifter on the run after letting his older self escape (a lapse which is punishable by death by his bosses – and you thought your job sucked) stumbles upon the farm of a young woman (Blunt) and her son.

The world of Looper is a well-constructed one with its ethos (violence appears legalised with every character toting guns) depicting a pessimistic projection of the America of tomorrow's socio-economic status. “I'm from the future; go to China,” young Joe's boss Abe (Daniels), a thug sent back in time to supervise the loops, tells him when he learns of his intentions to move to France in a hilarious scene .

Gordon-Levitt and Willis are good as the callow, aimless drug-addled low-life with aspirations and the burnt-out ex-hoodlum respectively. Perhaps Blunt's future will hold multidimensional roles, who knows?

Looper just might be the kind of film you would want to wrap your mind around if that's what you want of cinema. Other's might disagree, saying that such scrutiny is unwarranted. Even after suspending disbelief, there are plot holes and deliberate vagueness. What can't be disputed is the film, absorbing as it is, is involving nonetheless.

To say Looper is genuinely complex without being convoluted is true, up to a point.

The film, you see, is not bereft of clichés; it merely stifles them until a little before the conclusion where the narrative dives headfirst into sophistry. And time travel, and its implications are written off by the characters themselves as “brain-frying stuff”, inviting the audience not to use their heads.

Still, probably the best set-up sci-fi film you are likely to encounter in a while, Looper is worth engaging with.