Movie review: 'Looper' is the best sci-fi flick since 'Inception'

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

“Looper” is an action-packed science fiction thriller that gives Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s last thriller “Inception” a run for its money.

The film is a futuristic voyage that journeys into the realm of time travel, and after you leave the theater you won’t know what just happened.

Writer-director Rian Johnson did a spectacular job mixing cinematography with storytelling. With his writer hat on, Rian made a choice to make “Looper” dialogue heavy, which is an unusual angle to take for a sci-fi movie, but he pulls it off perfectly.

Starring in “Looper” are a host of Hollywood regulars with Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the main character Joe, Bruce Willis plays the older version of Joe and Emily Blunt plays Sara. Along for the ride are Jeff Daniels (“Dumb and Dumber,”) Piper Perabo (“Coyote Ugly”) and Pierce Gagnon (“The Crazies,”) all of whom perform just as well as the A-list stars.

“Looper” takes place in the year 2044 in one of the five mega cities that are left in the United States. We follow an assassin (Joe) as he goes about his business killing people for the omnipowerful mob.

Joe is what people in the future call a looper, his job is to show up to a certain location at a certain time, and when the mob teleports a person back through his loop (platform where the person from the future appears in the present,) he shoots them, and discards their dead bodies and collects his bounty. Sounds simple enough right?

Not so fast, at some point in every looper’s career their loop gets closed and when that happens they must kill the future version of themselves when they appear in the loop. After doing so, they collect a hefty payday and live 30 more years until they die.

Being a looper is not for the feint hearted, but on the day Joe arrives to his loop everything changes. What ensues is one of the most shocking and enticing two hours of your life.

When I first heard Gordon-Levitt was starring in “Looper,” I didn’t know how to feel because this is was his third major film this year (“The Dark Knight Rises,” “Premium Rush,”) and he also has a role in “Lincoln” later this year. But after seeing him in “Looper,” all feelings of uncertainty were silenced because Levitt’s performance was as close to perfection as an actor can get in a sci-fi movie.

Gordon-Levitt wasn’t the only one who gave a spectacular performance. The entire cast really deserves a standing ovation after seeing “Looper” because everyone played their parts astonishingly well.

The most jaw-dropping aspect of “Looper” is its cinematography. The shots are shot with purpose and stylized in a unique way I have never seen before.

In one particular scene, we follow Joe as he walks through a nightclub, but we follow the scene as if it we were on the ceiling looking down at Joe as he makes his way through the club.

Cinematographer Steve Yedlin deserves a slightly bigger piece of the pie because the variations of shots and filming styles he used were meticulously chosen and it paid off with remarkable scenes throughout the movie.

The setting in “Looper” is very futuristic down to the finest details, but there are many references to the western genre.

The props stick out in “Looper” more so than in any other futuristic sci-fi movie in recent memory. The guns although futuristic, have a classical splash with the shotgun typed weapon, the blunderbuss and the old school Dirty Harry style revolvers.

“Looper” will have you spinning much longer than its two-hour runtime, and is a must-see movie that will have you leaving the theater speechless.

Brent Stenstrom is a broadcast and electronic media junior.

Brent Stenstrom

Brent is a former staff member of The Oklahoma Daily who worked as Life & Arts Reporter, Life & Arts Reporter and Copy Editor.