What gets your attention first about Rian Johnson’s Looper is its speed — on a basic level, it’s just a very fast movie, the text, cuts, and exposition coming at the audience hard and sharp. That pace is established in its opening scene, in which its hero (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) stands in a field, checks his watch, takes out his earbuds, and waits. The second a hooded body magically appears in front of him, he blows the poor soul away. Boom, cut, next scene.

Looper is a movie that wears its jazzy, ebullient style on its sleeve. Writer/director Johnson, who previously crafted the smashing Brick and the enchanting Brothers Bloom, is one of our giddier filmmakers — he’s intoxicated with the sheer act of movie making, and his enthusiasm is infectious. But he’s also got a magician’s gift for diversion; in retrospect, one of the most remarkable things about Looper is how it starts as one movie, and then slyly transforms itself into something else entirely. … Read More