This film was released in 2012 and starred Joseph
Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt.
I have to say it’s one of the best sci-fi/action stories I’ve ever seen.
I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a sci-fi
flick this much since Equilibrium
(2002). The main pull for me was the plot
itself, because for a sci-fi flick, this one didn’t really have too many
mind-blowing visual effects. The story
and the characters drove the motion of the movie, and it swept me along on its
urgent and rather emotional race toward the finish. Excellent, excellent!
The story is set in a rather dystopian world, still quite
similar to our own present. Time travel
has not yet been invented. But thirty
years into the future it will be.
Immediately it is outlawed, but criminal organizations in the future
still use it to get rid of their enemies by dumping them, bound and with their
head in a sack, into the past, where a waiting “looper” will shoot them dead as
soon as they get there. A looper is paid
in silver, bars of which are strapped on to the person sent to him for
killing. Eventually though, having a
looper running around is too risky, so the bosses from the future would find
the looper’s future self, and in a stroke of bitter irony, send him back to the
past for his younger version to kill. In
this case, gold bars are given as an incentive, and thus the “loop” is
closed. Our Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is one
such looper. The events of the film
begin to escalate when his best friend fails to close his “loop” and ends up
getting killed. Joe believes he himself
was entirely at fault for not being able to save his friend. And then things get really bad when he
himself fails to kill his future self.
So then Future Joe (Willis) must now try to set things in motion so that
his present self will not have to live a life in which he would eventually watch
his beloved wife get murdered. For that
particular offence, Future Joe blames the “Rainmaker,” the evil overlord of the
future. He sets out to kill the
Rainmaker in the present so that the child will never grow up to be the evil
overlord that he will be. I’ll stop here
to avoid giving away too much of the movie.
Really, it must be seen to be truly appreciated.
The movie touched on a varied number of themes, but I think
the central one is that of taking responsibility for one’s actions, facing the
consequences, and being honourable and noble enough to accept them. By the end of the film, Joe finally finds the
perfect solution to break the cycle of pain and bloodshed that binds his life
with that of the Rainmaker. He takes the
future into his own hands and saves everyone even at the cost of the only thing
he has left. Other themes the flick
touched on were loyalty, parenthood, a child’s innocence, revenge, and the
redemptive power of love. It’s a
glorious mishmash of all that and more. Fast-paced, thought-provoking, and
emotionally intense, I highly recommend this film to one and all.
