LOOPER (Rated R)

Like many science-fiction films, “Looper” envisions a dystopian future where criminals run everything and the urban landscape is as bleak and unforgiving as anything in “Blade Runner” and similar successors in the genre.

The dehumanized future is just around the corner, set in the Midwest of 2044, where graffiti is abundant, rusted vehicles are abandoned, crime runs rampant and streets are overrun by the homeless.

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s visions of the future are neither predictable nor pedestrian. If anything, his previous films (“Brick” and “The Brothers Bloom”) reveal a creative streak to make something unique that is rich with layers and meaning.

“Looper,” which uses time travel as a means rather than an end, creates a mind-bending universe that is filled with moral implications and temporal paradoxes that engage the viewer in thought-provoking contemplation.

More importantly, though the film is clever and challenging, “Looper” is above all an exciting thriller that sustains its thrills on an existential yet essentially simple premise.

In the year 2044, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Joe is a hit man known as a “looper,” who carries out his duties on targets identified by gangsters from the future.

By the year 2074, time travel exists but it is illegal, mainly due to the implications of changing history, and so the criminal underworld has taken over the time-traveling business.

The gangsters of the future send their victims back to 2044, gagged and tied up, with sacks over their heads. Someone like Joe is waiting in a cornfield to blast them with a blunderbuss, no questions asked.

The victims are dispatched back in time with bars of silver or gold attached to their bodies, the reward that is owed to the looper carrying out the assassination.

Part of the bargain for great wealth and leading a life of excitement is that each looper will grow old enough to be sent back in time to be killed by his younger self.

Things get ugly when the normal chain is broken. It happens to Joe one day when his future self, Old Joe (Bruce Willis) materializes at the designated spot, but Young Joe is momentarily distracted and Old Joe goes on the run.

Joe’s crime boss Abe (Jeff Daniels, looking and acting more like Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski”) is displeased that Young Joe did not “close the loop,” meaning that he failed to kill his older self at the appropriate time.

The contemporary Joe is something of a hipster. He likes to take drugs by means of eye drops, drive his bright red sports car around town and sleep with his dance hall hooker girlfriend Suzie (Piper Perabo).

All of Joe’s favorite things are put at great risk, including his practice of French with a diner waitress, when Abe orders a hit by thugs who use precision weapons, called “gat guns.”

Meanwhile, a shadowy figure from the future, the criminal boss of the entire underworld known only as the Rainmaker, decides that the time has come to eliminate all of the loopers.

Now in the contemporary world of 2044, both Young Joe and Old Joe meet up in a remote diner for conversation that is revealing for the pragmatic aspects of the predicaments that face the present and future Joes.

While the younger Joe wants to kill his future self, the older Joe wants to track down and slay the future Rainmaker who ruined his life by killing his Chinese wife. Of course, this mission is complicated by the fact that the Rainmaker is probably a kid in 2044.

On the run from Abe’s thugs, Young Joe takes refuge at the isolated rural home of farmer Sara (Emily Blunt), a single mother who is raising her troubled but brilliantly gifted young son Cid (Pierce Gagnon).

That Sara is intensely self-reliant and handy with firearms is important to the story, but it’s the special nature of her child that is even more important to Young Joe’s willingness to remain in hiding at the farmhouse.

Even with prosthetic enhancements, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does not really resemble a younger Bruce Willis. But that doesn’t matter in the least. These are two strong actors who bring emotional resonance to their roles.

All that matters is that “Looper” is a first-rate science-fiction thriller that cleverly sustains interest in the violent machinations of a strange underworld culture of futuristic assassins who are more than one-dimensional figures.

DVD RELEASE UPDATE

Vintage television shows being released on DVD are always a welcome development, and even more so when the classic westerns are made available.

When Clint Eastwood was a young man, he had a featured role as ranch hand Rowdy Yates in “Rawhide,” an action adventure story about a group of brave men led by trail boss Gil Favor (Eric Fleming) on dangerous cattle drives across the West.

“Rawhide: Season Five, Volume One and Volume Two,” with a total running time of nearly 1,600 minutes, is presented in full screen format on DVD.

Little needs to be said about “Bonanza.” It remains one of the longest running and most popular of all television westerns.  

“Bonanza: The Official Fourth Season, Volume One and Volume Two” follows the High Sierra adventures of the Cartwright family, wise patriarch Ben (Lorne Greene) and his three sons (Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon).

The Cartwright clan attempts to maintain and operate their sprawling timberland ranch, the Ponderosa, in an era of violence and lawlessness in 19th century Nevada.  

Mixing action and adventure with personal relationships and emotions, “Bonanza” is quality television that stands the test of time with generations of viewers.

Both “Rawhide” and “Bonanza” DVDs are important additions to any collection of TV westerns.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.