Poster © TriStar Pictures. Shown at reduced size for review and commentary.
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GenreAction, Drama & Sci-Fi
RatedR
Runtime1 hr 59 mins
ReleasedSeptember 28, 2012
StreamingSee Where to Watch
DirectorRian Johnson
StarringBruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt
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Looper (2012)
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| TTMDB | +Add to Top 8 |
| Looper's Details | |
| Genre | Action, Drama & Sci-Fi |
| Rated | R |
| Released | 09/06/2012 (TIFF); 09/28/2012 (United States) |
| Streaming | See Where to Watch on this page. |
| Running Time | 1 hr 59 mins |
| Budget | $30M (reported) |
| Box Office | Updated daily from Box Office Mojo. See the numbers below. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Looper's Interests | |
| General | Silver bars, blunderbusses, cornfields, French lessons, diners, hover bikes. |
| Music | Nathan Johnson, Rian's cousin and his go-to composer. |
| Movies | 12 Monkeys (1995). More Bruce Willis, more time travel, more headaches. |
| Television | Dark. For when one tangled timeline is not enough. |
| Heroes | Kid Blue. Tries so hard. Never gets the respect. |
| Looper's Crew | |
| Director | Rian Johnson |
| Writers | Rian Johnson |
| Producers | Ram Bergman, James D. Stern |
| Cinematography | Steve Yedlin |
| Music | Nathan Johnson |
| Edited By | Bob Ducsay |
| Production | Endgame Entertainment, DMG Entertainment, Ram Bergman Productions |
| Distributed By | TriStar Pictures (United States), FilmNation Entertainment (International) |
Looper has a diner scene where Bruce Willis tells his younger self, and honestly you too, to quit asking how the time travel works. Smart, because it doesn’t. Rian Johnson knows the rules have holes, so he just outruns them with style. Joseph Gordon-Levitt wears a fake nose and borrowed eyebrows to pass as young Bruce Willis, and the wild part is that by the end you buy it. Emily Blunt is great as a farm mom with a shotgun and zero patience for strangers. The first hour is a sharp, grimy sci-fi crime story. Then the movie parks on a Kansas farm, slows way down and spends a long time on a kid with a secret, and it turns into a different film. Critics put it ahead of 92% of movies, audiences only 60%. A 7.9 because the ideas are bigger than the plot holes, barely. $124 says you spend the ride home explaining the ending to someone who did not ask.
What works: A smart, grubby future, a slick first hour, and Emily Blunt running the farm half like she owns the movie.
What doesn’t: The farm stretch drags, and the time travel logic falls apart the second you think about it for more than a minute.
Who it’s for: Sci-fi fans who like their time travel messy and their hitmen conflicted.
Spoilers
Old Joe is hunting the child who will grow up to be the Rainmaker, and that child is Sara’s son Cid. Young Joe sees that Old Joe’s mission is what turns Cid into a monster, so he takes himself out of the timeline, which erases Old Joe on the spot and saves Sara and Cid.
Kansas, 2044. Time travel will be invented thirty years from now, and it gets banned so fast that only the mob uses it. When they want someone gone, they zap him back to a cornfield where a hired gun called a looper is waiting. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of those loopers, working for Abe (Jeff Daniels) and stacking silver for a quiet life in France. Then a target shows up without a hood, and it is Joe's own older self (Bruce Willis), who slips away. Rian Johnson directs. One hundred eighteen minutes, two Joes, one big problem.
Anyone who wants to talk about time travel. Old Joe does not.
| Bruce Willis | Old Joe |
| Joseph Gordon-Levitt | Joe |
| Emily Blunt | Sara |
| Paul Dano | Seth |
| Noah Segan | Kid Blue |
| Piper Perabo | Suzie |
| Summer Qing | Old Joe's wife |
| Jeff Daniels | Abe |
| Pierce Gagnon | Cid |
| Garret Dillahunt | Jesse |
- (cur | prev) 14:30, 17 October 2026 DataBot +480 Numbers refreshed: Worldwide box office $176.5M; Domestic box office $66.5M; Opening weekend $20.8M; Profit / loss (est.) +$43.3M; Rotten Tomatoes 93%; CinemaScore B; box office chart updated; RT 93% (275 reviews); Metacritic 84 / 100; CinemaScore B; IMDb users 7.4 / 10 (633,928 votes); movie.guru score 7.8.
- (cur | prev) 12:00, 17 October 2026 DataBot +2,000 Profile created from Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo: cast, crew, release dates, budget, official trailer.