A good sci-fi movie is hard to come by these days. Prometheus was really promising but lost its way. Ener Looper from writer/director Rian Johnson who did Brick (which also starred Joseph Gordon Levitt) which I absolutly loved. Rian also directed two episodes of Breaking Bad which makes him even greater in my eyes.

Looper is a time traveling movie. Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) is a “Looper”, an assassin who kills the people that his mob employer send back to be disposed of. Time travel is a possible and outlawed 30 years in the future (the movie takes place in 2044, so 2074 for this time tech) so only the bad guys are using it. Here’s the catch, being a Looper means you’re in a contract with a rather harsh end. You “close the loop” when the mob sends your future self back to yourself so you can kill…yourself. You get paid off and your contract is finished. They do that to server all ties to you being an assasssin and working for them. So if you are a live 30 years (or so) in the future, you’re going to kill yourself.

How is that for mind bending? But there’s more. There’s some (extra) shady busisness going on with the mob and Future Joe (Bruce Willis) isn’t having any of it. Future Joe manages to get away from Present Joe and the chase is on. Present Joe is in a heap of trouble.

So it’s a cat and mouse chase that is so smart an inventive. The set up and execusion is so well done and handled. The cast is brilliant. Looking at JGL with the prothsteics to make him resemble Bruce Willis looks odd at first, but that feeling quickly melted away and JGL plays a younger Willis so well that I really thought I was watching the same person 30 years apart. There’s quite a bit more to the story, but I think that’ll ruin it too much if I say more. Future Joe’s reasoning and methods really push the concept and story forward.

I loved every second of it. Please go see it, this one needs to be a huge success, we don’t get many movies of this quality that offen.