'Looper' Trailer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Hunts His Future Bruce Willis

In this first trailer for Looper, star Joseph Gordon-Levitt sets himself up as a trained, well-paid killer for major crime organizations, but to call him an assassin would probably be overstating it. As the title puts forth, he's a "looper," a member of a secretive profession that's more like being the guy at slaughterhouse who stands there with a mallet and waits for the next cow to come through the gate.

In the future described by Brick director Rian Johnson's film, organized crime has wrested control of time travel; rather than using the technology to go back in time, place some surefire sports bets, dominate with their futuristic weaponry, and utterly fuck up the past, these responsible mobsters simply use the film's conceit as a cleaner way of offing those who have wronged them. Strapped with gold, the mob's target is transported to some predetermined location in the past where Gordon-Levitt (or one of his co-workers) is waiting, with a gun. Problem solved, thanks to future science. And guns.

This life of standing around with a gun, tossing a guy into an incinerator, then having drinks with Paul Dano works out well for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. UNTIL: One day, Gordon-Levitt-- always knowing in his heart he'd devolve into a blunt, squinting, hairless man--recognizes a to-be-executed Bruce Willis as HIS FUTURE SELF. Willis, also recognizing the situation, and possibly recognizing, "Oh, shit, this is that time when I was 30 and I tried to kill older me," uses Gordon-Levitt's moment of hesitation to escape, leading to what appears to be an extended cat-and-mouse chase wherein the mouse is just the cat, balder and surprisingly burly. Here's the trailer.

Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels are also there, for respective kisses and sage advice, assumedly. Maybe Daniels can explain why a young Bruce Willis looks so much like an early CGI rendering of Kirk Cameron.