Over the last year few years, Bruce Willis has become renowned for some truly awful straight-to-VOD stinkers. He starred in seven movies in 2021 alone, including turkeys like Cosmic Sin, Survive the Game, and Out of Death (with that last one sitting at 0% on Tomatometer). I can’t blame Willis for picking up an easy payday, but what’s annoying is that he’s barely putting in any effort.
So it’s nice that one of his best films is coming to Netflix next month to remind us that when he wants to, Bruce Willis can bring it. I’m talking about twisty-turny time-travel caper Looper.
Released in 2012 and written/directed by Knives Out and The Last Jedi‘s Rian Johnson, the titular ‘Loopers’ are contract killers hired by future criminals to kill victims sent back in time. The idea is that individual tracking systems in the future of 2074 are so advanced it’s almost impossible to dispose of a body, but that doesn’t apply to the present day.
If a looper survives until 2074 he’s sent back to be killed by his younger self, thus ‘closing the loop’. But things go awry when Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) fails to kill his old self (Bruce Willis). What follows is a wild ride, particularly during a truly nightmarish scene where someone’s younger self is being tortured, with the effects suddenly appearing on his older self’s body.
Willis is great in the movie, with Gordon-Levitt very believable as a younger version of him. Looper went on to become a sizeable hit, received positive reviews, and Rian Johnson scored several awards for his original screenplay. If you haven’t seen it, it’s absolutely worth checking out, if only for its unique and terrifying take on time travel.
Looper will be available to all Netflix subscribers from December 1.
