[8]

Looper is a mash-up of mobster movie and sci-fi time travel flick, but rather than getting caught up in its own clever twists on a (let’s face it) hackneyed sci-fi sub-genre, the movie is wisely more concerned with creating an emotionally gripping story. It moves and builds perfectly, dividing your empathy for its fully-fleshed characters in a story that shuns black and white to bathe in the glorious, murky waters of gray. Director Rian Johnson (Brick) maintains an element of film noir throughout the proceedings and his entire cast hit home runs. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (future Oscar winner) ratchet up the pathos, backed by rock-solid supporting turns from Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, and child actor Pierce Gagnon, who is nothing short of astonishing here. The less you know about the movie, the better. But if you’re sick of Hollywood’s cesspool of remakes and the superhero of the month, thank your lucky stars there’s a movie like Looper that you can check out.