ilver on the condition that all targets must never escape. When crime bosses want to end a looper's contract, they send the older version of a looper back to be murdered by his younger self and pay the killer off with gold bars instead. This is referred to in the trade as "closing the loop". Joe's boss, Abe (Daniels), was sent back in time to manage the loopers. This presented so minimal a challenge to someone of his experience, ambitions and abilities that he eventually acquired personal control of the entire city's criminal and law-enforcement infrastructures. He also owns a club where Joe goes to unwind and spend time with Suzie (Perabo), a showgirl and single mother. One night, Seth (Dano), Joe's friend and a fellow looper, visits him in a panic. On the verge of closing his own loop, Seth was informed by his future self (Brennan) of a mysterious character called the Rainmaker who overran the future crime bosses and was cancelling all of the loopers' contracts. Seth became so unnerved at this unexpected turn of events that he failed to close his own loop. Joe hides Seth in his apartment and visits Abe, who tells Joe he can either give up half of the silver he has saved as a looper or give up Seth instead. Joe eventually tells Abe where he hid Seth, and he is wracked with guilt over betraying his friend. Seth is tortured via permanent mutilation to lure his future self to the gangsters' location. They kill the older Seth and leave the younger one alive, albeit minus a few extremities. This presumably consigns him to an alternate timeline in which he lives out any few remaining years as a wretched quadriplegic. When Joe is directed to close his own loop, he shoots his older self without hesitation. He then retires to China where he enjoys a comfortable existence for many more years afterward. He falls in love with a woman named Xu ("Shu"). Then comes the day when he's to be sent back 30 years to be liquidated by his younger self. But now things happen a little differently. Young Joe hesitates this time when he recognizes himself in the older man (Willis). The future Joe thus engineers an escape, but young Joe devises a clever way of getting his older self to visit him at a diner. As they have breakfast, old Joe explains that when the Rainmaker sent his men to get rid of him, they ended up killing his wife, Xu, in the ensuing scuffle. He then managed to kill his captors and send himself back in time in order to kill the child who later becomes the Rainmaker. Young Joe still plans on shooting his older self to fulfill his contract and escape into early retirement. However, they?re both forced to flee when they are attacked by Abe's men with Kid Blue (Segan) in the lead, but not before young Joe tears a part of a map out of old Joe's pocket with coordinates and ten numbers written upon it. Young Joe follows the coordinates to a farm house owned by Sara (Blunt), who lives with her son Cid (Gagnon). When Joe shows Sara the map, Sara recognizes the ten digits as Cid's birthday along with the serial number of the hospital he was born in, prompting Joe to explain the situation about the Rainmaker. However, when the database shows two other children born on that same date and in that same hospital, old Joe decides to kill all three children just to be sure. After shooting the first of the three, however, he changes his mind on the second when he sees it is the showgirl Suzie's only daughter. As young Joe and Sara become close, he learns that she is a telekinetic, and that Cid was raised by Sara's sister for most of his life until she was accidentally killed by the boy, and Cid doesn?t believe that Sara is his real mother. One morning, they are attacked by Jesse (Dillahunt), who dies when Cid falls into a rage and lets out a devastating telekinetic blast. His extraordinary telekinetic powers ? which are far more powerful than any other mutant's - cause Joe to realize that Cid is the Rainmaker. At that moment, old Joe makes a second attempt to kill Suzie's daughter, but he then receives the new memories of young Joe that Cid is the right child just before being captured by Kid Blue. Young Joe tells Sara and Cid to drive away while old Joe is taken to Abe. When old Joe breaks free, he kills everyone except Kid Blue. As the two Joes confront each other near Sara's house, Kid Blue attacks and is killed by young Joe. Old Joe then blocks Sara and Cid from driving away and when they try to escape into the cane fields, old Joe shoots Cid without killing him, prompting Cid to let out another telekinetic blast. But before Cid can kill old Joe, Sara calms him down with reassurances of her love as his true mother. Old Joe stubbornly tries again to shoot Cid but Sara stands in his way. And just at that moment young Joe experiences an epiphany. He suddenly sees that old Joe's killing of Sara will cause a motherless, alienated Cid to eventually transform himself into the Rainmaker, thus perpetuating the cycle that old Joe was ironically attempting to disrupt. Stone-cold killer that he has been, young Joe decides to sacrifice himself to erase old Joe from existence, sparing Sara's life and thus preventing the Rainmaker from arising.

... Read more >>