“Looper”    Chew's Bite on “Looper" starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt.  Written and directed by Rian Johnson.

Please pass the manohla, we have another time travel tale ...this one about hit men.              

My written comment on a card to the guy running the screening of this movie the other night said, “Philip K. Dick on steroids.” Please note the fresh review of this film from Ms. Dargis for the New York Times. She too invokes Mr. Dick’s name, but not before my own invocation of that author’s handle.  Manohla might be reading my mind.  She's good, but not that good.

“Looper” is covertly pregnant with visual cues and stuff...well-acted...and mounted, but comes off nonsensical due to the rapid flip floppery  between “time zones”  and juxtaposing a Kansas of 2042 with yet a more distant future in a very down home way that I remember as a young boy living in semi-rural areas of that state smack dab in the middle.

What’s best about "Looper" is its excellent internal scenes taken in singularity, not riveted together in the zippity-ho-hum of, now you get it/now you don’t.  Or,  Oops here’s a new scene to watch.  And how does it connect with what I’ve just seen, and why isn’t the scene that just ended not seem to have actually concluded yet?

This is very cool.  Let’s hear it for filmic shorthand.

For me, Looper" played as something that Director Johnson was needing to impress his film buds. He probably has ... and shall.  I think there should be an award for a writer/director who doesn’t just pull stuff out of his arse...but from a time machine, already.

Emily Blunt is stunningly lovely while hard-edged...and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, after seeing him play really nice dudes in movies, is quite on to something as a young, macho Bruce Willis (with make up) at war with his older self. 

Of course, even as his older self: Bruce be Bruce.

“Looper” will connect well with those who went, uh...gaga over “Inception” which also had Gordon-Levitt on the cast roster. Heck man, stuff flies through the air in "Looper," too.  That’s likely to signal some to think it deserves an Oscar.

Even while watching “Looper,” it was hard to believe that I was, again, in Kansas ... some more.  Oh if I could, just one more time, see "Zardoz."