Looper, gem of science fiction. The equivalent of Blade Runner for 2012. Among the five best films of the year.
Kansas. 2044. A hired murderer repeated phrases of French armed with a shotgun while waiting for a time machine from the future to bring you their next victim.
And that’s just the beginning of one of science fiction fables more complete, interesting and evocative film has proposed in the past twenty years. Built on a script full of twists and that is enriched in situations and characters as the film progresses. A script whose complexity reminiscent of other notable works written for the film, as L.A. Confidential or The Dark Knight. Among its outstanding features highlights the alliance of a single exposure, typical of genre cinema, associated with a deepening of characters and situations that leaves the viewer enough material for your own reflection. To this we must add one of the most skillful mix of genres samples that cinema has given us in recent years. The start of the story is set in a futuristic cityscape but basically associated with black film, with characters reminiscent sporadically to American Psycho. But one of the plot twists we are suddenly in a Hitchcock thriller type, with the game of time travel and a landscape reminiscent fields in Kansas that memorable action sequence with the plane chasing Cary Grant in a classic master of intrigue, North by Northwest. And at a later stage the fabled falls squarely within the Western formula, with characters like Kid or the gunmen who persecute the protagonists. And it is at that stage where this movie full of wisdom and winks film moviegoers, we propose another generic reference as a gesture of complicity with the viewer, that plane with the girl leaving the tree trunk, as did Van Heflin in one of the westerns that draws on visual and story Looper, the classic Shane. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the Alan Ladd gunman who arrives in the life of this girl and her son haunted by a violent past and pending bills to adjust …
One would think that after so much generic proposal, both as regards cinephile wink and turning to classics like Blade Runner, North by Northwest, Shane … the film already has it all said and discussed … but no. In fact, the entry in the account of the character of the mother and child are the starting point of another storyline supplementary weft that will lead to a touch of horror and science fiction with mutant that has much in common with Terminator. That last reference complete this sci-fi fable whose central theme, as will be explained in the end, is the redemption of the different characters.
So the first thing that stands out in Looper is its rich storyline proposal.
But it also has the best character that Bruce Willis have proposed in recent years his best work in the genre of science fiction, even better than Twelve Monkeys. A character who is part of a two-headed leadership frame comprises Gordon-Levitt and Willis, each in his timeline, which contributes to the richness of the plot. This dual role also allows both the character of Gordon-Levitt as Willis, while remaining protagonists meet simultaneously and at different stages of the plot the role of antagonists. They are both heroes and villains. They feed each other bringing new twists to the plot, and continue to grow as characters. The same applies to the mother and the child, whose history imposes a change in tone without breaking the whole story of that puzzle.
Looper progresses from simple to complex. It grows as they grow all their characters. It’s a story that contains another story which in turn contains another story … The proposal is so rich in characters, situations and environments that automatically after leaving the theater you feel like seeing her again, to warn new aspects of its plot and learn more about the world split into multiple timelines presented to us. A world that is built on the slopes and fringes that have been cleverly scattered throughout the plot. This is essential in science fiction.
I refer to such issues as the gang of outlaws armed with revolvers which they are named, or the attacks of the homeless, creating a landscape ranging from the United States back to the times of the Great Depression and then to western. In this regard it is interesting to pulse between country and city, rural and urban environment that is configured as a key essential visual and narrative of the film.
Another example of the script fringe that leverages the theme of the mutants, and how just passing in the main plot, becoming a single stroke in the first part of the story into something essential to the end of it which is reaching increasingly frantic pace, with the final match and the subsequent outcome western approach which reminds visual elements applied to the outcome of Seven.
All this results in a tribute to the science fiction genre and moving between Blade Runner, Twelve Monkeys and Terminator, built as a perfect example of hybridization of genres in which we also detected a powerful influence of paranoid futuristic tales Phillip K. Dick.
Miguel Juan Payán
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