DVD Reviews

Looper – DVD Review

By Jeff Swindoll Jan 7, 2013, 14:31 GMT

In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented - but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past where a \'looper\' - a hired gun, like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good - until ...more

Joseph Gordon-Levitt meets his future self and it’s Bruce Willis in this mind-bending time travel that has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing up to the end.

2044 - Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper.  In 2074 time travel is a reality, but has been outlawed so only the outlaws use it. 

When they need to dispose of a body, which thanks to future technology is hard to make unidentifiable, they send it back in time and Joe kills them and hides the body - a body that isn’t identifiable since it is from the future. 

It’s a good deal for future thugs and the assassins are paid in bars of silver, but when they want to close the loop they send the older version of the Looper to be killed by their younger selves along with a payment of gold. 

Joe’s group is run by Abe (Jeff Daniels), who is from the future, and with fellow Loopers Seth (Paul Dano), Joe’s pal, and Kid Blue (Noah Segan) who is an overconfident “gat” man who doesn’t like Joe.  Loops are being closed more rapidly and Joe comes face-to-face with his older self (Bruce Willis) who is hellbent on protecting his future. 

Joe is overpowered and old Joe goes on the run to try and find the youthful crime boss called the Rainmaker and the trail will lead to the farm of Sara (Emily Blunt) and her young son Cid (Pierce Gagnon) with young Joe waiting for his older self to show up at the farm. 

Time travel movies are always interesting.  The characters from the past shouldn’t know what is going on but the future characters should know it all. 

Finding a way to weave a compelling and mysterious storyline that will keep audience guessing and not confused can be hard to do.  The less you know about it the better, so I’ve tried not to give you too much in the plot description. 

I think that Johnson has done that with Looper, your mileage may vary but I found it a great adventure.  It also helps that Gordon-Levitt and Willis bring differing takes on basically the same character.  They also do some minor prosthetics to make young Joe look like Willis. 

The slight future setting is enough to bring us into sci-fi territory – familiarity with occasional touches of future tech.  The story also moves along, with some surprises along the way, to a satisfying conclusion that doesn’t leave too much head scratching. 

Looper is presented in widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions.  Special features include a commentary with writer/director Rian Johnson, Gordon-Levitt, and Blunt, 13 minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary by Johnson and Segan, the 8 minute “Future from the Beginning” making of, the 94 second Looper animated trailer, and the 16 minute, three-part “Scoring Looper” with composer Nathan Johnson.

Looper is a film that hits on all the right time cylinders and features fine performances from Willis, bringing some Twelve Monkeys to the table, and Gordon-Levitt, looking eerily like Willis. 

If you’re wanting more special features, such as many more deleted scenes and featurettes, you’ll need to get the Blu-ray. 

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