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Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@screendaily.com


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Looper Reviewed by Mark Adams


A spectacularly cool time-twisting sci-fi thriller, Rian Johnson’s Toronto opener shows that smarts and action-adventure can go hand-in-hand. Breez- ily freewheeling, visually stunning and impres- sively complex, Looper is brimming with ideas, action and heart as well as having the star power to click with audiences. Writer/director Johnson — who made Brick and


The Brothers Bloom — keeps the audience on its toes with a resolutely smart script that changes pace and direction with ease, heads into dark, dis- turbing territory yet never loses track of the rules of its genre. Time-travel sci-fi thrillers are always the movies


that tend to leave film-makers open to fanboy ridi- cule, and while at times Looper heads into inter- weaving corners that it finds hard to get out of, its sheer force of intelligence — and a healthy dose of set-piece action sequences — means it is also grip- ping and provocative. In the mid-21st century, time travel has been


invented but ruled highly illegal —however it is being exploited by the criminal fraternity. When gangs of the future want someone killed, they pop the victim in a time-travel device and send them back 30 years where they are assassinated by hired assassins called ‘loopers’. One such looper is Joe Simmons (Gordon-Lev-


itt), one of the best in the business who waits patiently by a cornfield with his blunderbuss-style weapon in hand in the year 2047 to efficiently kill whichever masked victim who is transported to him. After dumping the body he heads back to the


n 12 Screen International at Toronto September 7, 2012


OPENINGNIGHT FILM


US. 2012. 118mins Director/screenplay Rian Johnson Production company Endgame Entertainment, Ram Bergman Productions, DMG Entertainment International sales FilmNation Entertainment, www.wearefilmnation.com Producers Ram Bergman, James Stern Executive producers Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Douglas Hansen, Julie Goldstein, Peter Schlessel, Dan Mintz Cinematography Steve Yedlin Editor Bob Ducsay Production designer Ed Verreaux Music Nathan Johnson Main cast Joseph Gordon- Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo, Paul Dano, Noah Segan


city where he is saving his payments for the future… he has plans to travel but is enjoying the lifestyle far too much. The only retirement plan for loopers is if their


boss — actually from the future but overseeing hits in the past — Abe (a charismatic Jeff Daniels) decides they are surplus to requirements and their victim turns out to be their future self. Joe sees what happens when a looper decides not to go through with a contract when his friend Seth (Paul Dano in a telling cameo) finds himself on the wrong side of Abe and his trigger-happy goons, led by Kid Blue (Segan). However Joe is supremely confident in his abili-


ties, though heavy drug use and a faltering love for exotic dancer Suzie (Piper Perabo in a refreshingly raunchy role, a change from her nice-girl TV appearances), sees him increasingly on edge. Things go wildly out of control when at his next


hit his victim arrives unmasked (usually they have a sack over their head) and Joe quickly realises he is looking into his own eyes circa 2077 (Willis). He cannot pull the trigger, and before he know it he is overpowered by the balding dynamo and the fifty- something Simmons is on the loose. The plot throws in a whole series of mind-bend-


ing changes of direction — especially when the rea- son for Simmons-the-elder’s presence in the past is revealed and how dark and bloody his single- minded mission actually is — as Simmons-the- younger has to track down his older version. This takes him to a remote farm occupied by


Sara (a nicely strident Emily Blunt) and her young son — and we are only probably at the half-way point of the film by now — and Looper becomes even more complex and strange as old-fashioned


sci-fi action-adventure gives way to more cerebral sequences and the film starts to examine the philo- sophical implications of the deeply weird and com- plex situation. The film marks the third time Joseph Gordon-


Levitt has worked with Rian Johnson — he starred in Brick and had a cameo in The Brothers Bloom — and Looper more than confirms his leading man (in an action film) credentials. He proved he could carry a gun in Inception but here he has gun-battles and fist-fights with veteran action star Bruce Willis and more than holds his own. Willis becomes more important as the film draws on, and despite his ter- rible actions he is an oddly sympathetic character — as well as being the one who really explains the implications of the film’s time travel concept. Looper may prove too thoughtful to fully engage


with fans of all-action fare, but it has the perfect balance of smarts and explosions, witty dialogue and impressively staged action scenes, great per- formances and high concept.


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