Cast & Commentary: “Looper”
2012: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (director) Rian Johnson, and Bruce Willis for Looper at TIFF
My Take: Looper is a futuristic tale on its way to being a cult classic whose coolness factor is only superseded by its thought-provoking nature. This one will be known for the small attention to detail in the performances - Joseph Gordon-Levitt takes on the likeness and manners of a young Bruce Willis at times better than Willis himself, Paul Dano grabs our attention and makes himself known to be the sympathetic character in the few moments he has onscreen, Emily Blunt’s Americana, farmville accent makes me forget she’s even British, and the movie will undoubtably marked the start of a great career for one child actor who conveyed more in a look than alot of Hollywood actors could do in whole pages of dialogue. It will be known even more so for its concepts and commentary on destiny unchangeable because circumstances vs. a person’s character. In this world, specialized trained assassins do the bidding of the crime syndicates of the future, killing and disposing of the bodies of their enemies, all the while really agreeing to limit their lives to only 30 more years (a.k.a “close their loops”) in exchange for wealth. They are unknowingly slowly becoming the people they end up killing, both literally and figuratively as we witness their propensity for betrayal against their fellow assassins, fast lives filled with drugs and prostitutes, and willingness to take on other killer-for-hire jobs. The film helps us understand the temptations and motivations that attract these characters to become loopers and through the aid of an older “self” on a mission to correct the past, how one in particular recognizes how his past could mirror the future of an important child and chooses to become a different person to prevent that for happening. Few films can do well the confrontation between two versions of self, but this one manages to give us great humorous and jarring scenes between two men who are so similar but have so little respect for each other. To help us along with the film’s action sequences and time jumps, director Rian Johnson gives us some cool special effects that aren’t there just for show but come to illustrate a world that is alittle advanced from ours in some ways but in many ways it’s very much the same. This stands as one of my favorite films of the year. My Grade: A
