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Looper (film)

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Looper
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRian Johnson
Written byRian Johnson
Produced by
Starring
CinematographySteve Yedlin
Edited byBob Ducsay
Music byNathan Johnson
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • September 6, 2012 (2012-09-06) (TIFF)
  • September 28, 2012 (2012-09-28) (United States)
Running time
118 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$30 million[2]
Box office$132,800,000 [3]

Looper is a 2012 American science fiction action film written and directed by Rian Johnson. The film stars Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt. In Looper, time travel is invented by the year 2074 and, though immediately outlawed, is used by criminal organizations to send those they want killed into the past where they are killed by "loopers", assassins paid with silver bars strapped to their targets. Joe, a looper, encounters himself when his older self is sent back in time to be killed.

Looper was selected as the opening film of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. It was released to positive reviews in Australia on September 27, 2012,[4] and in the U.S. and the U.K. on September 28, 2012.[5][6]

Plot

In 2044, the United States has suffered economic collapse, causing severe social decay and growth in organized crime. In addition, a mutation has occurred in ten percent of the population giving them telekinetic powers—the ability to levitate small objects. Thirty years further into the future, in 2074, time travel is invented, but is immediately outlawed. Tracking technology has rendered it nearly impossible to dispose of bodies secretly, so crime bosses use illicit time travel to send those they want killed to the past where they are killed by "loopers": assassins paid with silver bars strapped to the victim. When crime bosses want to end a looper's contract, they send his present self back to be killed by his younger self, referred to as "closing the loop". Failing to close the loop is punished by death.

In 2044, Joe Simmons (Gordon-Levitt) works for a mafia company in Kansas as a looper. His boss Abe (Daniels) was sent from the future to manage the loopers and also owns a club that Joe frequents, and where he spends time with Suzie (Perabo), a showgirl. Abe controls his own group of hired muscle, the "Gat Men", including the overconfident Kid Blue (Segan), who is desperate to prove himself to Abe. One night, Joe's friend Seth (Dano) visits him and tells him that he was supposed to close his own loop, but hesitated. Before Seth's future self escaped, he mentions the Rainmaker, a mastermind who has taken over future organized crime and is closing all loops. Joe attempts to protect Seth, but later chooses to betray him to Abe instead of surrendering half of his silver, which he has secretly been stashing for his retirement. The mafia capture Seth and start mutilating him, knowing that the injuries will be translated to his future self. They scar an address on his arm which he has to go to. Along the way, Old Seth begins losing body parts, and upon arriving at the location he is killed by Kid Blue, closing the loop.

Later, during a contract, Joe hesitates when he recognizes the target is his future self, allowing him to escape. After meeting in a diner, Old Joe (Willis) tells Joe that the Rainmaker sent him back to be killed, and that Old Joe's wife was killed during his capture. Old Joe killed his captors and traveled back to kill the Rainmaker as a child. Joe attempts to kill Old Joe and fulfill his contract, but both of them flee when they are attacked by the Gat Men. Joe tears a scrap off a map from Old Joe's possession, bearing a marked location and a string of digits. Old Joe uses the string of digits to search a database, getting three possible children born on the same day in the same hospital, and he intends to kill all three.

Joe follows the map to a farmhouse owned by Sara (Blunt), who lives with her son Cid. When Joe shows Sara the map, Sara recognizes the digits as Cid's birthday and the serial number of the hospital he was born in, prompting Joe to explain the situation. Joe tells Sara about the Rainmaker and the danger they're in, and offers to stay and protect them, killing Old Joe when he comes around. As Joe and Sara become close, he learns that she is a telekinetic, and that Cid was raised by Sara's sister for most of his life until she was killed. Cid does not believe that Sara is his real mother. One morning, they are attacked by Gat Man Jesse, who is killed when Cid falls down the stairs and lets out a telekinetic blast. His extraordinary telekinetic abilities cause Joe to believe that Cid is the Rainmaker, and Sara confirms that her sister was killed by Cid when he lost control of his powers. Meanwhile, Old Joe is captured by Kid Blue.

Joe tells Sara and Cid to flee, surmising that his employers or Old Joe will target the farm. Meanwhile Old Joe breaks free, killing Abe and all the Gat Men except for Kid Blue. As the two Joes confront each other near Sara's house, Kid Blue attacks and is killed by young Joe. Old Joe escapes during the attack, then finds and attempts to kill Cid, prompting Cid to let out another telekinetic blast. However, before Cid can kill Old Joe, Sara calms him down and assures him by telling him his mother is with him. Old Joe tries to kill Cid again, but Sara stands between them. Joe realizes that if Old Joe kills Sara, it will lead to Cid's becoming the Rainmaker due to his tormented childhood, thus creating a closed time loop. Joe therefore kills himself, erasing Old Joe from existence and saving Sara and Cid.

Cast

  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Joe: A looper working for a mafia organization in Kansas.
  • Bruce Willis as Joe's older self sent from 30 years into the future to "close his loop" and end young Joe's contract.
  • Emily Blunt as Sara: A farmer living in rural Kansas. She is the biological mother of Cid.
  • Paul Dano as Seth: Joe's best friend and companion.
  • Noah Segan as Kid Blue: An overconfident and arrogant member of Abe's Gat Men, who bears hostility against Joe.
  • Piper Perabo as Suzie: A showgirl at Abe's nightclub.
  • Jeff Daniels as Abe: Joe's boss, who was sent from the future to manage the Loopers.
  • Pierce Gagnon as Cid: Sara's son, who has unusual telekinetic abilities.
  • Xu Qing as Old Joe's Wife
  • Tracie Thoms as Beatrix
  • Frank Brennan as Old Seth
  • Garret Dillahunt as Jesse: A member of Abe's Gat Men.
  • Nick Gomez as Dale
  • Marcus Hester as Zach

Production

Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt speaking at WonderCon 2012 in promotion of Looper.

Looper was written and directed by Rian Johnson. After Johnson released The Brothers Bloom in 2008, he re-teamed with producer Ram Bergman, who produced Johnson's previous two films, with the goal of starting production of Looper in 2009.[7] In May 2010, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was cast in one of the lead roles, which he would play after completing Premium Rush.[8] Later in the month, Bruce Willis was also cast.[9] In the following October, Emily Blunt joined Gordon-Levitt and Willis.[10] Noah Segan, Jeff Daniels, and Piper Perabo were cast in January 2011.[11]

Filming began in Louisiana on January 24, 2011.[12]

Makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji created the prosthetics that Gordon-Levitt wore in the film so that he would physically resemble Willis.[13]

The film's score was composed by Nathan Johnson, Rian Johnson's cousin.[14]

Talking about Looper and time travel in film, Johnson said:

Even though it's a time-travel movie, the pleasure of it doesn't come from the mass of time travel. It's not a film like Primer, for instance, where the big part of the enjoyment is kind of working out all the intricacies of it. For Looper, I very much wanted it to be a more character-based movie that is more about how these characters dealt with the situation time travel has brought about. So the biggest challenge was figuring out how to not spend the whole movie explaining the rules and figure out how to put it out there in a way that made sense on some intuitive level for the audience; then get past it and deal with the real meat of the story.[14]

Release

Looper was screened at the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2012.[15]

Looper was theatrically released in the United States on September 28, 2012.[16] The film's studio Endgame Entertainment negotiated a deal with FilmDistrict at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2011, for FilmDistrict to release the film in the United States through TriStar Pictures.[17]

The Chinese release of the film reintegrates a substantial number of scenes set in Shanghai that were edited out due to pacing reasons. The move was requested by Chinese production company DMG Entertainment in order to further appeal to Chinese audiences.[18] The Chinese version contains additional scenes with Old Joe and his wife, elaborating on Old Joe's motivation to pursue the Rainmaker. The Shanghai that is pictured include several CGI additions to the Pudong skyline and China is opined to be a comparatively pleasant country in the future in both the Chinese and US versions. The actress playing Old Joe's wife, Xu Qing, is well known in China (ex. The Founding of a Republic).

Johnson released a free audio commentary on SoundCloud to be downloaded and listened to during the film, with the warning: "Needless to say, this is NOT to be listened to on a first viewing, or before you've seen the film."[19]

Reception

Critical response

Looper has received near-universal acclaim from critics. As of October 17, 2012, it holds a 93% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 225 reviews and an average score of 8.1/10, with the reported consensus: "As thought-provoking as it is thrilling, Looper delivers an uncommonly smart, bravely original blend of futuristic sci-fi and good old-fashioned action."[20] On Metacritic, the film holds an 84/100 average rating based on 44 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[21]

Toronto International Film Festival

James Mottram of Total Film gave Looper 5 stars out of 5, concluding that it was "[t]he best sci-fi movie since Moon. The best time-travel yarn since 12 Monkeys. And one of the best films of 2012."[22] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, calling it "an engaging, neatly worked-out time-travel sci-fi thriller", but also criticizing the effects involved in making Gordon-Levitt resemble Willis: "At first, the effect is a bit odd, and you can't quite put your finger on what's off; then it feels downright weird to be looking at a version of Gordon-Levitt who is no longer the actor you've known for a few years now."[23] Peter Debruge of Variety also gave the film a positive review, writing that writer-director Johnson's "grandly conceived, impressively mounted third feature shows a giddy, geeky interest in science-fiction, then forces it into the back seat and lets the multidimensional characters drive. In a genre infamous for loose ends, this thinking man's thriller marshals action, romance and a dose of very dark comedy toward a stunning payoff."[24]

General release

Kim Newman of Empire magazine gave Looper 5 stars out of 5, writing, "Intelligent science-fiction sometimes seems an endangered species—too much physics and there's a risk of creating something cold and remote, too many explosions and get lost in the multiplex. Looper isn't perfect, but it pulls off the full Wizard Of Oz: it has a brain, courage and a heart."[25] Noel Murray of The A.V. Club gave the film an A− grade, writing, "Looper is a remarkable feat of imagination and execution, entertaining from start to finish, even as it asks the audience to contemplate how and why humanity keeps making the same rotten mistakes."[26] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review, writing, "Looper is way inventive but it wears its creativity lightly, like it's no big deal. This is a highflying, super-stylish science-fiction thriller that brings a fresh approach to mind-bending genre material. We're not always sure where this time-travel film is going, but we wouldn't dream of abandoning the ride."[27]

Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, writing, "Looper's heady blend of time travel, gritty action and a jot of romance is such a thrilling and cerebral mind-bender that it will likely have moviegoers gathering outside the theater afterward to hash out details of its intricately constructed universe. Not that that's a bad thing."[28] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising the performances of Willis and Gordon-Levitt and concluding, "Lacing tremendously exciting action with touching gravity, Looper hits you like a shot in the heart."[29] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times also gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising its screenplay and writing, "Looper, a smart and tricky sci-fi story, sidesteps the paradoxes of time travel by embracing them. Most time travel movies run into trouble in the final scenes, when impossibilities pile up one upon another. This film leads to a startling conclusion that wipes out the story's paradoxes so neatly it's as if it never happened."[30]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+ grade, writing, "The time swivels in Looper evoke some of Inception's fancy temporal tricks (some of which, of course, also involved Gordon-Levitt straddling multiple time zones at once). But it's the glimpses of Children of Men-like societal dystopia that give the movie its real weight".[31] Richard Corliss of Time magazine gave the film a positive review, calling Looper a "hybrid, mashing Quentin Tarantino and Philip K. Dick into a species of pulp science fiction" and also writing, "A fanciful film with the patina of hyper-realism, Looper is well served by actors who behave not as if they were dropped carelessly into the future but spent their whole desperate lives there."[32] Dana Stevens of Slate gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Looper felt to me like a maddening near-miss: It posits an impossible but fascinating-to-imagine relationship—a face-to-face encounter between one's present and future self, in which each self must account for its betrayal of the other—and then throws away nearly all the dramatic potential that relationship offers."[33]

Audiences polled by the market research firm CinemaScore gave the film a B+ grade on average.[34]

References

  1. ^ "Looper". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved September 29, 2012.
  2. ^ Kaufman, Amy (September 27, 2012). "Animated 'Hotel Transylvania' to scare off 'Looper'". Los Angeles Times.
  3. ^ "Looper". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  4. ^ "Australians to see Looper a day before the rest of the world". August 7, 2012. Retrieved August 16, 2012.
  5. ^ "US Release Date". June 9, 2012. Retrieved June 14, 2012.
  6. ^ "UK Release Date". June 27, 2012. Retrieved June 30, 2012.
  7. ^ Zeitchik, Steven (September 17, 2008). "Rian Johnson's future target: 'Looper'". The Hollywood Reporter. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ Kit, Borys (May 4, 2010). "Joseph Gordon-Levitt eyes two action thrillers". Reuters. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ Fleming, Mike (May 14, 2010). "CANNES: Bruce Willis Plays Mature Joseph Gordon-Levitt In Time Travel Pic 'Looper'". Deadline.com. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ McNary, Dave (October 1, 2010). "Emily Blunt set for 'Looper'". Variety. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ McNary, Dave; Coonan, Clifford (January 21, 2011). "Actors in 'Looper' group". Variety. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ "Official Looper production blog".[verification needed]
  13. ^ Whipp, Glenn (August 31, 2012). "'Looper': Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rian Johnson are a tight team". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
  14. ^ a b Kit, Borys (September 27, 2012). "'Looper' Director Rian Johnson on Reuniting With Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tackling Time Travel and His Love of 'Inception' (Q&A)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  15. ^ Vlessing, Elan (September 6, 2012). "Toronto 2012: 'Looper's' Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt Bring Star Power on Opening Night". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  16. ^ McClintock, Pamela (September 29, 2012). "Box Office Report: 'Hotel Transylvania' Wins Friday, Headed For Record $38 Mil-Plus Debut". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  17. ^ McNary, Dave (May 14, 2011). "TriStar, FilmDistrict set 'Looper' deal". Variety. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ Zeitchik, Steven (June 19, 2012). "A more Sino-centric version of 'Looper' will be released in China". Los Angeles Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ Chitwood, Adam (October 5, 2012). "Download Director Rian Johnson's In-Theater Commentary Track for LOOPER". Collider. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
  20. ^ "Looper". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  21. ^ "Looper Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More". Metacritic. Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  22. ^ Mottram, James (September 6, 2012). "Looper review". Total Film. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  23. ^ McCarthy, Todd (September 6, 2012). "Looper: Toronto Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  24. ^ Debruge, Peter (September 6, 2012). "Looper". Variety. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  25. ^ Newman, Kim (September 17, 2012). "Looper". Empire. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  26. ^ Murray, Noel (September 27, 2012). "Looper". The A.V. Club. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  27. ^ Turan, Kenneth (September 27, 2012). "Review: Gordon-Levitt and Willis take 'Looper' full circle". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  28. ^ Puig, Claudia (September 28, 2012). "Circling, action-packed story makes 'Looper' intriguing". USA Today. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  29. ^ Travers, Peter (September 27, 2012). "Looper". Rolling Stone. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  30. ^ Ebert, Roger (September 26, 2012). "Looper". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  31. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (September 26, 2012). "Looper". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  32. ^ Corliss, Richard (September 27, 2012). "Looper: (500) Days of The Terminator". Time. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  33. ^ Stevens, Dana (September 28, 2012). "Looper". Slate. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  34. ^ McClintock, Pamela (September 30, 2012). "Box Office Report: Sony's 'Hotel Transylvania' Smashes Records With $43 Mil Opening". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
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