Tuesday, October 02, 2012
He's a Looper! And he doesn't want to watch his bod grow old
“He’s a Looker!" (Remember that 1981 cynical sci-fi movie
about digital lookism?) Now, it’s “He’s
a Looper”. And those double “o’s” are
pronounced as “eu”, not as a long “O” in Dutch. (There’s also “Watchers”.)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who transfigured himself on SNL as a
“Magic Mike”, is heavily modeled, his face made fatter, as a 30-something
low-level hired hit man (Joe) who is about to encounter what his future self
will look like, in 30 more years. That
doppelganger is played by Bruce Willis.
In the future, we all know, organized crime controls time travel the way
it controls cocaine (because both are illegal) – apparently the Libertarian
Party doesn’t have enough sway in the future (or there aren’t enough Ron Paul
imitations to become president) . Old
Joe comes back to get rid of Young Joe and cover up a huge killing spree by
“the Rainmaker”. (Remember, the latter
name is a 1997 first-person novel by John Grisham, made into a popular film
with Matt Damon, about conniving health insurance companies.)
The logic of closing the “Loop” is simple. If young Joe dies, then old Joe
dematerializes, because he cannot exist in space-time, at least according to
Stephen Hawking.
The film is set in Kansas, and a future nightmare version of
KCMO Is shown (It reminds one of “Blade Runner”, put perhaps it will impress KU
students.) It was actually filmed in the
delta country of Louisiana, south of the Big Easy. There are interesting future jaunts in China.
Much of the film’s denouement centers young Joe’s finding a
woman who may be the mother of the future “Rainmaker”. In 2042, some people have telekinetic
ability, and can cause local tornadoes, derechoes, or haboobs.
The film has a sequence where Joe is shown aging a few years
apart on each shot, until he morphs into Bruce Willis. A naked time lapse could be interesting. In many cases, men tend to add chest hair as
they age, but lose it on both the head and legs. No one wants to think about growing old.
Director Rian Johnson explains some of the mysteries in the
plot here.
Paul Dano plays a minor role as the haggard “Seth”, but he
recalls his role in “There Will Be Blood”.
It’s interesting to compare this film with a gay sci-fi film
in 2011, “Judas Kiss” (June 4, 2011), where a college-age filmmaker meets his
future self. One could imagine Richard
Harmon as having played younger Joe in “Looper”, and Timo Descamps as “Seth”.
The official site for "Looper" is here.
I didn’t notice any festival circuit awards on this
one. But it is distributed by Sony’s
Tristar and FilmDistrict, typically associated with larger independent action
films. How does Sony decide when to use
its Columbia, TriStar, and Screen Gems brands?
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1 comment:
Great review Bill. Didn’t have me as emotionally-invested as I thought I could have been, but still, a pretty solid sci-fi flick that’s heavy on story and characters, which is all that mattered to me.
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