LOOPER: I've seen the future and it looks like Bruce Willis

The most depressing aspect of director Rian Johnson's imagining of our near future is not the widespread homelessness or the rampant, casual gun violence.
It's the fact that in 2044 we'll be driving the same cars as we do today!
Seems that President Obama's rescue of the US auto industry 3 years ago wasn't enough to ensure long-term survival and after 2012 Detroit just stopped designing new cars.

All-in-all the next thirty years does not hold much for us to be cheerful about if LOOPER is to be believed. This thriller paints a pretty grim picture of the United States where the only thing that's really different from today is that engineers have found a way to take the wheels off motorbikes and make them hover a few feet off the ground.
Well, that and time-travel.
It still doesn't exist in 2044, but by 2074 it will have been invented and immediately banned, but that doesn't stop criminal syndicates from our future's future using it to send back to their past (but our future) criminals that they want murdered. That's because by 2074 not only will we have time travel and hovering motorbikes, we'll also have a body tagging system that makes it almost impossible to do away with someone surrepticiously.
So those marked for death are bundled into the time machine (which looks like an industrial washing machine) and dispatched to 2044 where Loopers like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are waiting with a shotgun to blast them into eternity.
It's a profitable business if you don't mind the blood but it comes with an inescapable expiry date. In order to conceal the fact that they're using illegal time-travel to bump-off undesirables, the mob of the future also periodically sends back the older versions of the Loopers of 2044 to be executed by their younger selves, thereby closing the loop.
Which is how Gordon-Levitt finds himself hunting down Bruce Willis, who is the Joe he's become by 2074, and whose time is now up.
Because Willis was Gordon-Levitt he knows the fate he has in store, and he's determined to avoid it so he can find and kill the child who will grow up into the ruthless mob boss who orders his execution.
(I promise you, this is definitely easier to follow on the screen than in print).
All of which sets up a tense cat and mouse game that allows Gordon-Levitt to show off his impressive Bruce Willis impression (with a little assistance from a prosthetic nose and - more disturbingly - lipstick and over painted eyebrows) and Willis to demonstrate that at 57 he still possesses his 'Die Hard' era tough guy chops.

I'm a sucker for time travel movies and particularly enjoyed writer-director Johnson's refreshing twist on the traditional time travel plot, with the younger Joe having zero interest in learning anything about his future from the older Joe, while the elder Joe's contempt for his younger self's hotheadedness is tempered by his vested interest in keeping him alive.
Stand-out amongst the supporting cast is Jeff Daniels demonstrating there's more to him than two decades of bland leading man roles might have suggested, while Emily Blunt also acquits herself well as the world's most unlikely farmer.
LOOPER is a gripping combination of sci-fi and thrills which will keep you pretty much on the edge of your seat right up to the final showdown. It works because the story is unpredictable, uncomplicated despite the subject matter, and succeeds in avoiding most of the holes and implausibilities which tend to dog time-traveling tales. With just one exception that I spotted, there's not the distractions caused by trying to figure out whether a certain thing really would or could happen when a character travels through time.
With LOOPER to add to 'The Dark Knight Rises', '50/50' and 'Inception' Gordon-Levitt continues his inexorable march towards Hollywood leading man status and director Johnson sets himself a high bar to clear with his next project, whatever that may be. For the rest of us, unburdened by such career opportunities or challenges. there's nothing more required than to sit back and enjoy.

 

50/50: a very dishonest comedy about cancer

It's possible to find humour in almost anything although, as a recent episode of 'Family Guy' demonstrated, it can be challenging when the subject is something as sensitive as domestic violence.
The same goes for life threatening illnesses like cancer.
As anyone knows who's suffered from it or had friends or family with it, there's precious few laughs to be had in dealing with a disease which can debilitate, disfigure and kill. All of which makes 50/50 a gutsy proposition.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this black comedy as Adam, a 27 year old radio journalist diagnosed with a rare and potentially lethal form of cancer in his spine. Seth Rogen is Kyle, his immature, foul-mouthed best friend. Kyle is convinced that cancer is a chick-magnet and persuades Adam to shave his head to better play the part of a terminally ill young man looking for a little female sympathy and company in the bars and nightclubs of Seattle.
Everyone has their own way of handling to life-changing situations and there is no right or wrong way to respond to a diagnosis of cancer.But as someone with a close friend currently battling a very serious cancer what irked me about 50/50 is it's dishonesty in its portrayal of the situation. It treats cancer as something that's barely more serious than a broken bone, and is no more of an inconvenience to the pursuit of daily life than an arm or leg in a cast.
Sure, Adam is shown vomiting after his first chemo session, and he finds himself too tired to stay out all night with Kyle chasing women, but beyond that the film doesn't so much gloss over as completely ignore the other side effects of the disease and its treatment. He shaves his head before his hair starts to fall out but at no point does he look like someone whose body is under relentless attack from within. There's no weight loss or any of the other indignities the disease can visit on the human body.
And don't get me started on the finances! Adam is employed by Seattle's NPR radio station but he appears only to be working on one short documentary feature which has no deadline, giving him buckets of time to hang out with Kyle and visit the hospital for treatment. At no point is the ugly subject raised of how he's going to pay for all this healthcare, while also covering the rent/mortgage on his very attractive house and all the other costs associated with life, like food. In return for minimal working hours Adam is apparently in receipt of America's most generous health insurance benefits. No wonder NPR is forced to run so many fundraising drives every year! Cancer may be ravaging his body but in this version of the United States it leaves his bank account and life savings untouched.
While 50/50 is to be commended for its kid-gloves free approach to the issue of cancer and, in particular the delicate subject of how to relate to the person with the cancer, it's a great shame that it has to sacrifice so much of the reality of the situation in the process. The absence of schmaltzy sentimentality is refreshing (although the ending makes a disappointingly predictable foray into this sugary territory) but the selective portrayal of the subject matter is insulting.