Looper

Not since Inception has there been a more engaging and thought-provoking science fiction film than Looper. This is only director Rian Johnson's third film after the indie film noir Brick and the criminally underrated The Brothers Bloom, but here he goes completely full circle in his capabilities. Looper is one of the smartest films not just of this decade, but of all time. However, it's not exactly a kiddie flick by any means, as it's also a violent, profane, sexual and drug-ridden crime thriller - but the fact that most of the bad is taken in a negative light offsets the impact, making it perfectly fine for older teens. The story starts out with Joe, a gun-for-hire called a looper who kills criminals dispatched from 30 years into the future. His life of crime has given him the opportunity to indulge in selfish pleasures such as sex, drugs and money. All loopers, however, must kill their future selves to "close the loop," and Joe's older self escapes. Joe then learns that his older self is trying to kill one of three children who could possibly be a crime lord in the future. While he waits for the older Joe, the younger Joe finds a family farm with one of the three kids, and ends up with the joint duty of protecting the family and killing his future self. The plot is intriguing in its own right, with plenty of twists and moral quandaries that keep things going, and since this is a Rian Johnson film, the script is witty and highly original. Also, the visual effects are well above the quality one would expect with a $30 million budget, with cool depictions of this new world's genetic mutation that involves telekinetic powers. In almost every respect, this film is actually slightly better than Inception - a film that had over five times Looper's budget, but was a less risky gamble due to the well-known Christopher Nolan directing it. But before The Dark Knight trilogy, before Inception, even before Insomnia, Nolan did a little film called Memento. Looper is basically Rian Johnson's Memento, a film that will go down in the history books and make this underrated director a household name. In other words, Looper is a wonderful film, but it's not really for anyone under 15. The violence is bloody at times, as this is a crime thriller about a gun for hire. Johnson's debut Brick unfairly got an R rating for a brief but bloody point-blank headshot seen from a distance. Looper has about two dozen similar scenes, with some more violence of its own. With the realization that any injuries inflicted on younger loopers are done so on their older selves who have time traveled to the present, we see an older version of a looper gradually lose his limbs and parts of his face, and we subsequently see the bloody operating table where the younger looper was basically eviscerated (the body is covered, however). Someone shoots another with a gun full of rock salt. One character has outbursts with his telekinetic powers that can be quite scary, and in one scene, he splits a bad guy in half; a slo-mo cloud of blood sprays out of his chest, and the character who killed him is next seen covered in blood. A man has his fingers crushed by a trap door and is shot in the ear, and someone later bangs a hammer onto the former wound. A man kills a child (offscreen), but feels horrible about it. Sex is also pretty rampant, as the club Joe does business at is full of prostitutes. There are two topless women in one scene, and there are two scenes of a suggestive nature. The first actually turns out to not be sexually related, but the second involves brief, clothed and nongraphic sex. Language is raw: there are about 30 f-bombs (2 paired with "mother" and 4 paired with Jesus' name), 20 s-words and the occasional milder word or two. Joe is addicted to a drug applied through the eyes and has withdrawal symptoms, and brief shots of syringes imply that, in his future life, he went on to do similar. There's also smoking and drinking, but that comes with the territory. Overall, though, older teens can do far, far worse than Looper. It's a smart and sexy futuristic crime thriller that will be remembered for generations to come.