Outside a cornfield. It's evening time. A man stands there, listening to a French tutorial and holding an antique looking shotgun in his hand, his ‘blunderbuss'’. He checks his stop-watch, and stands there, waiting. And out of nowhere, a man appears, kneeling, hands tied to his back, with a cloth sack on his face. Before we can process even an ounce of this – BANG! – the man fires his shotgun. A title card appears on screen with sound loud enough to shake up the entire auditorium. LOOPER.
That’s the first scene you witness in the film. That’s the moment you know that this is a film that has dedicated itself to shake up that comfortable seat you’re sitting in and push you to the edge of your seat and keep you there until the end. That’s the moment you know you are witnessing something special.
That’s the moment you grin at the screen, knowing that you're in for something awesome.
"Time Past and Time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”
– T.S. Eliot
LOOPER is a story set in the future with a backdrop of time travel. Time travel. Films concerning with time travel have one thing in common and obviously so. They all deal with a person that wants to change/fix things from his/her past. It’s like a basic human tendency. If you have access to something that makes it possible to go back in time, the first thing you would do is change things that lead your life to some bad consequences. It’s the idea that connects us all on a same basis. But what if you present self doesn’t agree with your future self? What if your present self doesn’t believe in your future self? At one point in the film our protagonist, Joe and his future self, Old Joe, sits across a diner table, facing each other, arguing. It’s a brilliant scene made convincing and intense thanks to impressive performances by JGL and Bruce Willis and ingenuity of Rian Johnson’s screenplay. It’s a scene to marvel at. It’s a scene that answers to ‘why LOOPER works?’.
Joe is a LOOPER. Year is 2044. “Time travel has not yet been invented but 30 years from now, it will have been.” narrates Joe. This time travel machine is in hands of big criminal organisations, and they use it to get disposed of the persons wanted gone. These targets are sent back in time, to 2044, and LOOPERS kill them and get rid of bodies. Clean. But everything comes with a price. These LOOPERS are hired on a specific contract that also involves killing their future selves eventually. That’s called “closing the loop”. They get paid a fortune and are free to live their lives the way they want for next 30 years. “This job doesn’t attract the most forward-thinking people.” says Joe. Now imagine this, there you are ready as LOOPER with your ‘blunderbuss’to kill a man and you somehow realize it’s your future self. Wouldn’t you be bothered for a second? Joe is not. But Old Joe has a plan. This is just a start to a story that promises more brilliant things to come.
“I don’t want to walk about time travel shit. Because if we talk about time travel and shit, we are gonna be here sitting here all day, drawing diagrams with straws.”
That’s the line Old Joe says to Joe. LOOPER acknowledges where its characters come from. These are the guys who kill for money. Professional assassins. There are no pseudo-philosophical lines thrown from characters’ mouths to make the film look smart. The film does that while being honest with its characters. That’s one of the many things why this film stands out. Another thing is using the future backdrop. Rian Johnson does this very effectively. He doesn’t exploit the future premise and shove CGI wherever you see. It’s done subtly and necessarily and with Blader Runner-esque cinematography. LOOPER has also got handful of terminologies that you will take home with yourself and geek about it later. There are plenty of homages to cinema and other forms of art cleverly set by Rian.
There are two key montages in the film. One involves Joe’s monotonous routine over many days. Other is a montage of Old Joe’s relatively ‘adventurous’ life over 30 years. One can be called ‘A Day in the Life'’ and the other, ‘A Life in a Day’. It’s a very cleverly drawn parallel.
“I saw it, the bad path. And the path was a circle, round and round.”
LOOPER cleverly establishes that the path of time is round, a circle. Everything that goes around, comes around. It plays with ideas of path of time, nature of memories, bad motives born because of bad choices, all these wrapped intricately in one story. LOOPER took Rian one and half years to write. The work that he has put in all that time, just shines. Its script is wholly original, smooth, and not unnecessarily complicated. But it also comes with some plot-holes and surety of nit-picking on the Internet. The performances are brilliant! JGL’s make-up is convincing enough to make him look like younger Bruce Willis. He also nails all the Willis mannerisms effortlessly. Willis throws some emotional piano cues in the film that is otherwise full of heavy bass percussion. He also has a‘yippie kay yay, motherfucker!’ moment in the film. I won’t go into details of Emily Blunt ‘s character and her kid because it’s the part you want unspoiled. But I will tell you this, both Emily and the kid have done marvellous job. Especially the kid.
Moral ambiguity is at the heart of this film.
Everyone has a motive in this story, everyone has a choice. But the path of time is round, a circle. After plenty of selfish choices have been made, a selfless choice is made at the end, fixing everything! The only way the story could be ended; the perfect way.
That’s the moment you know you’ve just witnessed something special. That’s the moment you grin at the screen.
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