In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent into the past, where a hired gun awaits - someone like Joe - who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by sending back Joe's future self for assassination.
Joe is classified as a "looper", a job in which his employers use time travel to send men from the future to be killed into the past, where Joe can properly dispose of their bodies. However, to tie up loose ends and erase the evidence of his ever being a looper, Joe knows that one day his future self will be sent back for him to kill. When this day comes, Joe's future self is prepared and escapes, and the two men struggle separately in the past trying to evade capture and attempting to fulfill their own personal agendas.Written by
Ellen
The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2010 Blacklist; a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year. See more »
Goofs
As the Gat men are mobilizing at Abe's and filing out, on the video screen to the right, the same figures pass by over and over. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Joe:
Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now, it will have been. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations. It's nearly impossible to dispose of a body in the future... I'm told. Tagging techniques, whatnot. So when these criminal organizations in the future need someone gone, they use specialized assassins in our present called "loopers." And so, my employers in the future nab the target, they zap him back to me, ...
See more »
Alternate Versions
The version shown on FX in the US features replacement footage for Piper Perabo's nude dialogue scene featuring her in lingerie; according to Rian Johnson on Twitter, it's also a different performance altogether. See more »
This is simply one tough film to review or sum up. It's a very interesting film and the movie certainly sticks with you. Still, it plays as overly ambitious and it does stumble over itself far too often. It's a shame because it strives for so much and buckles under its own ambition.It does capture a kind of "Twelve Monkeys" vibe being that it's a gripping, grim and often times bleak film that won't make anyone's "feel good" movies list. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels all deliver excellent performances as one would expect. There's a mixed bag here to be sure.
I'm glad I saw it but I really can't say I care to ever see it again.
27 of 60 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
This is simply one tough film to review or sum up. It's a very interesting film and the movie certainly sticks with you. Still, it plays as overly ambitious and it does stumble over itself far too often. It's a shame because it strives for so much and buckles under its own ambition.It does capture a kind of "Twelve Monkeys" vibe being that it's a gripping, grim and often times bleak film that won't make anyone's "feel good" movies list. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels all deliver excellent performances as one would expect. There's a mixed bag here to be sure.
I'm glad I saw it but I really can't say I care to ever see it again.