Caught this one on cable recently. I’d been wanting to see it and found it alternately fascinating and impenetrable. Good premise, bad execution, too much going on to be linear. Get ready, sci-fi fans.
Fave Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a member of an elite crew of live-for-today 2044 hooligans called Loopers. This assassin ring kills crime world targets from 2074, delivered back over the years via an outlawed time machine. He is given an appointed time and place of delivery, and as soon as the victim appears, bagged and tagged with his pay in silver bars attached via straitjacket, he executes them and disposes of the body. Oddly they use a giant weapon of old, the messy hand cannon of the 1700s known as a blunderbuss. Unfortunately being a “looper” comes with the “proviso” that they only get 30 years to serve until they too get looped back for execution. In the meantime it’s all rock’n’roll, fast cars, a jump in the number of people with telekinesis, and some sort of eye-drop-delivered drug amid a dystopian city backdrop of beggars, burnouts, and thugs. Hell breaks loose when Joe is faced with closing his own loop, aka executing his 30-years-gone self, played by Bruce Willis. Old Joe is a fighter, and after a brawl Young Joe lets the quarry escape.
See, in 2074 Willis is nabbed in China and watches as the ganglanders kill his wife; he overtakes his captors then leaps into the time machine back to 2044 determined to nip in the bud the scary overlord known as Rainmaker who is mowing down all the loopers at one time and making life hell in the future. In other words, Willis wants to kill the monster as a child, and save the life of his bride. He’s gleaned some identifying info to track the tyke, but has to keep his younger self and the rest of the executioner squad off his back. At the same time, he has to safeguard Young Joe or there won’t be any Old Joe. The future can change in an instant.
The trail leads to Emily Blunt, wielding a convincing Okie accent and a mean axe stroke, who is raising up a boy on an isolated farm. As it happens, this youngster has gargantuan telekinetic powers that can spark fires, twirl the furnishings, churn up hurricanes and uh, kill people if he gets riled. At 6 he’s formidable, so we can only imagine the horrors he will be capable of 30 years down the line as the Rainmaker. Just as Young Joe tracked down Blunt, Old Joe arrives soon after, and Young Joe finds himself conflicted: Should he protect an innocent boy and his mother figure, who loves the kid unconditionally and just may keep him from being a monster, or let his older self, Willis, squash the kid like a bug in order to protect one possible salvaged future in China? As Willis shoots at the kindergartner, Young Joe, an orphan who has yet to experience the redemptive love of a Chinese wife, ultimately puts the blunderbuss into his own mouth, saving the kid and wiping out Willis’ existence.
OK, maybe I like the flick a little better in retrospect. Still-- Piper Perabo shows her boobs for no reason, Jeffrey Daniel grows facial hair and tries to be hardcore as a mob boss (please Jeff), and the intense Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) and his crooked nose are wasted.
The watching was at times uncomfortable. I didn’t get excited until this chilling kid showed up with his impressive tot acting and the scripted ability to turn the world upside down with his singular abilities.
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