Time and Again

Looper is that rare bird - a time travel movie that makes sense. You know how I was talking about the plot holes in Skyfall or Man on a Ledge? No complaints here.

It takes place in a near future dystopian Kansas where the only careers are prostitute and looper. Our "hero", Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a looper. Their job is to kill people from the future, sent back in time by the crime syndicates because it has become too difficult to hide bodies in the future. That little detail justifies the whole silly enterprise - you mean they have time travel and they use it for nothing but body disposal? Yes, and I buy it, and everything after.

I'll try to avoid spoilers, but I guess we all know that Gordon-Levitt eventually is tasked to kill his future self, and that he does not. To get a little more spoilerish, I liked the way that neither younger nor older version is admirable much at all - stupid, vicious, impulsive. It even says so in the narration.

Willis is an old hand at time travel - there is a bit of Twelve Monkeys to this, mostly in the dystopian feel. There is more than a touch of Bladerunner to the city as well, with the hover cars and neon signs. But aside from a few tributes, it has its own feel, a future that looks familiar and lived in, although sucky, with the, you know, dystopianism.

Nice note: They grow sugar cane in Kansas in the future, due to global warming, I guess. They used Louisiana for the locations. Nobody discussed this. They just put it out there, letting you fill in the blanks.

Good stuff.