"This time travel crap just fries your brain like an egg," muses Jeff Daniels in the trailer for the new sci-fi thriller, "Looper." That might be the best possible summary for a film whose trailer contains more complicated expositional voiceover in its first 30 seconds than most sci-fi films have over the course of their entire running time.
The fact that "Looper" is going to be one of the year's more challenging (and probably more satisfying) films should come as no surprise to those familiar with the work of writer-director Rian Johnson. His feature debut, "Brick" (which also starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt), was a complex mystery set in and around a contemporary high school in which everyone talked in fractured, stylized noir-speak; his follow-up film, "The Brothers Bloom," was a crafty bait-and-switch prank disguised as a whimsical story about two con artist brothers.
"Looper" doesn't look like it's going to be all head games, though. The trailer also features plenty of stunts, shotgun blasts (one of them provided by Emily Blunt) and explosions; pretty obligatory elements for a movie co-starring Bruce Willis. And hopefully the film will feature more droll insights provided by Jeff Daniels than just the one he makes here.
Check out the trailer (not the teaser to the trailer, mind you) below or in HD at iTunes Movie Trailers. "Looper" opens Sept. 28.
