Looper

Directed by Rian Johnson (2012)

In any time-travel movie, problems arise when you think too hard about the arising paradoxes, or if the mechanism of time-travel is explained in universe too much. I think Looper deals with this quite well, in a meta but digestible way. The film is set in a world where time travel has been invented thirty years in the future, and mobs/gangs/mafias use it to send people back thirty years to be killed by a hired man in the present. Eventually, all hitmen are sentenced to death by their own (past) hand. Our story follows one killer whose future self escapes, and we see the unraveling of the present "looper" gang as chaos ensues. Relating back to my point about time-travel, characters ask at times "how the fuck does this work?" and are answered along the lines of "we don't know". It's a bit of a cop out to some, but I appreciate it. There's no point in getting bogged down in the details of time-travel when you have more interesting stories to tell. That being said, the consequences of the method of time travel and how they answer certain paradoxes allow an engaging story and cool plot elements to unfold. In entirety the movie uses this premise to tell a story of passion and hatred consuming you, sacrifice and love, and the ability to affect the fate of not only yourself, but those around you.

(12/20/21)