Looper is an example of a film in which solid performances, adroitly-created tension, and sloppy narrative meet. The premise is fine: in the future, a looper is an assassin contracted to kill criminals sent back from the future. According to Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt), looper and narrator, it’s very difficult to dispose of bodies in the future – evidently suggesting that the dystopian in which he lives (the present) gets better. But time travel, which is illegal in the future, allows the mafia – or other subversive, black coat and hat wearing brood – to send their marks back in time for extermination.
All in all, a cool premise.
But then writer / direction Rian Johnson tries to get clever by introducing cause and effect scenarios of future existences in the present and vice versa. We first see the impact that a future self can have in the present when Seth (Paul Dano), who is also a looper, is tasked with killing his future self. This is not a practice exclusive to Seth. In fact, the future self is a mark that all loopers are aware they will have to face. This “closing the loop” is part and parcel of the gig. After all, the future mafia can’t have assassins from the past grow into the future only to provide incriminating evidence. As compensation, each looper, when he kills his future self, is offered a “golden payday.” Instead of the usual handful of silver bars strapped to their mark’s back, they receive two or three times as much in gold.
This could be linked to the recent mortgage crisis, the dotcom crash, and the great depression if we consider that these loopers are mortgaging their future to pay for their present. There’s an ominous disassociation that persists throughout Looper that illustrates an indifference to who Joe is as a young man and who he becomes. Despite identical DNA and some shared memories, he is barren of empathy and perhaps this is the allegory that Johnson was weaving. All in all, it was off to fine start, but falls off quickly.
In a circuitous fashion, I’ll loop back to Seth.
Seth fails to kill his future self, or lets “his loop run,” which means that the future self and present self are both marked for death. Seth hides but is given up. Then we see his future self. A scar appears on his forearm telling him where to go, seemingly for refuge. This sequence is great and becomes eerier and eerier as his body parts go missing. First a pinkie, then a ring finger. Soon his nose. Then a foot, some calves, and a hand or two. Before he’s shot, we realize that those after the future Seth were amputating the present Seth’s limbs.
This is a very cool and creepy scene, but the impetus of the problems of employing time travel.
There are two ways to handle time travel — if we’re taking a Stephen Hawking view. First, the future self can travel back in time, and there will be no repercussions to him or her – despite the actions of the present self – because the future self is locked in the current present. His or her existence becomes part of the present, so the condition of his or her future self doesn’t matter.
The second theory is the one most famously employed by Back to the Future: the future self can be harmed by the actions of himself or – in McFly’s case – his parents. I.e., if his parents don’t get together, he can’t be born to travel back in time. This is made clear in Zemeckis’ film when Mary is on stage but his body begins to fade and his stomach seems to be extremely gaseous with the thought that he will soon vanish. Looper follows this path when Seth’s parts get amputated, when scars appear on future Joe’s arm (Bruce Willis) and in other places while he and Joe co-exist in the present.
Not a problem thus far until Johnson quickly explains how future Joe comes to get sent back.
Evidently, present Joe, initially, successfully kills his future self, takes the gold, flees to China, dives deeper into addiction, becomes another form of hitman, falls in love with a Chinese woman, goes clean, gets tracked down by the mob (now as Bruce Willis), gets sent back in time to die, but this time attacks his present self and flees.
The problem here is this: given the second time travel scenario that Looper employs, future Joe’s attack on present Joe completely negates future Joe’s attack on present Joe – because the future Joe that gets sent back would not have had the experiences that his death afforded present Joe. Without the “golden payday,” present Joe is unable to flee to China, party, go downhill, find the love that compels him to recover, return to the past, etc.
Even if you don’t buy into one of the two time-travel theories posited by Hawking, you must admit that the established narrative is wonky simply due to the nature of “truth” that Johnson has put forth. Without assuming the audience has any prior experience with Hawking – or other time-travel theory – Johnson establishes a world where the past and present self are in tandem. Changes to the present-self are immediately apparent in the future-self. This is also the tool utilized at the end of the movie – which conjures another issue I have with the narration, but I digress.
The movie itself is enjoyable if you focus on the acting. Joseph Gordon Levitt shines and quickly erases my apprehensions about his made-up facial features. Like Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor, it looks as if Levitt as padded the inside of his lips with cotton balls. Perhaps this was accomplished with simple prosthetics. At first, this is a bit off-putting (since we know how Levitt usually looks) but it soon makes sense when his pronounced upper lip is present in Willis’s. Their furrowed brows, their crooked eyebrows also mirror each other, as do their voices. In this, I think it’s more Levitt emulating Willis than the inverse, mostly because Willis moves and sounds just like he often does. It’s as if we’re watching Levitt mimic John McClane or James Cole.
If you focus on the screenplay, the narration, or the interesting but unnecessary jargon that fills the life of a looper, then you’ll have a lot to ponder.
