Looper
“The perfect hit becomes impossible when the target is yourself.”
Director
Rian Johnson
Release
28 September 2012
Runtime
118 Minutes
Certificate
15
Synopsis
In Joe's world, time travel hasn't been invented yet. Thirty years in the future, however, it exists — and organised crime has found a particularly brutal use for it. When the mob wants somebody to disappear, the victim is sent backwards through time. A looper is waiting. Joe is one of those assassins. He kills whoever appears, disposes of the body and collects his payment. But there's a catch to the profession. Eventually the organisation eliminates its own loopers by sending their future selves into the past. Killing that final target is known as closing the loop. Then Joe's future self arrives. Old Joe escapes before his younger version can complete the job, leaving both men hunted by the criminal organisation and pursuing very different objectives. Young Joe wants to repair the damage and preserve the future he expects to have. Old Joe is determined to change that future before it ever happens. Their choices eventually lead them to Sara and her young son Cid — and force Joe to confront the consequences of a cycle of violence that stretches across decades.
The Movie Trailer
Looper is a 2012 science-fiction thriller from writer-director Rian Johnson that turns time travel into the foundation for an ingenious crime story.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Joe, a hired killer working in 2044 for a criminal organisation that has discovered an unusual way of disposing of people. Victims are sent thirty years into the past, where assassins known as loopers are waiting to kill them and erase the evidence.
It's lucrative work — until Joe's next target arrives.
Standing in front of him is his future self.
Played by Bruce Willis, Old Joe has no intention of quietly accepting his fate. When he escapes, both versions of the same man are thrown into a battle over a future that hasn't happened yet.
CLOSING THE LOOP
What Happens When the Target Is You?
Looper takes one of the oldest ideas in science fiction — meeting your future self — and gives it a brutal twist.
Joe doesn't encounter an older version of himself through scientific curiosity or accident. Old Joe has been delivered to him for execution.
For a looper, killing your future self is simply part of the arrangement. Complete the contract, and you can spend the remaining decades of your life knowing exactly when the end will eventually arrive.
Joe's failure to close his loop changes everything.
Suddenly two versions of the same man exist in the same period, each fighting for a completely different idea of what their future should become.
TWO VERSIONS OF JOE
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis Face the Same Future
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same man at opposite ends of his adult life, but Looper isn't interested in making them identical.
Young Joe focuses on protecting the life he expects to build. Old Joe has already lived that life and arrives carrying the consequences of everything that happened during those missing decades.
That difference puts the two versions of Joe into direct conflict.
Neither sees himself as the villain. Both believe they're protecting something worth fighting for — even when doing so threatens the life the other desperately wants.
BREAKING THE CYCLE
Looper Uses Time Travel to Tell a Story About Consequences
The mechanics of time travel give Looper its hook, but Rian Johnson uses them to explore something much simpler: the consequences created by violence.
Young Joe's decisions shape Old Joe's memories. Old Joe's actions alter the world his younger self will eventually inherit.
Sara and Cid's arrival forces both men to confront how far those consequences could reach.
Rather than treating the future as something fixed, Looper asks whether somebody can recognise a destructive cycle early enough to prevent it — even when breaking that cycle demands an enormous sacrifice.