Rated R. 118 minutes. At area theaters.

It doesn't take long into the futuristic thriller "Looper" to declare, "Finally! A movie that comes with the dark energy of a Philip K. Dick story without having to return to that long-departed writer whose work inspired 'Blade Runner,' 'Total Recall,' 'Minority Report' and 'The Adjustment Bureau,' to name a few."

Sure, it has the debris-strewn streets of a decaying society. Yes, cultural dissipation abounds in a town where young men in natty attire zip past the Wild West interactions of less-fortunate denizens on their way to a night of strip-club and drug action.

And yet, from its casting to its fondness for the retro cadences of noir fiction, it is absolutely the work of writer-director Rian Johnson.

The 38-year-old director (whose dad Craig Johnson calls Colorado home) came on the scene in 2005 with indie darling "Brick," a detective tale set amid high-schoolers. Joseph Gordon-Levitt starred. "Looper" reteams the two.

Looper isn't a name but a nasty occupation. The year is 2044, and though time travel does not yet exist, it will in 30 more years when the mob will employ the illegal activity to off rivals.

Turns out those future gangsters like things tidy. So at some point they "close the loop." That is, they send the hit man's older self back to 2044. He gets whacked, and the clock begins winding down on the younger self's life. He's got 30 years, then boom. (Why is there always a little something three-card monte about time-travel flicks?)

Every now and again, a looper can't help himself and helps himself: He lets his older self "run." This happens to Paul Dano's character, the jangle-nerved Seth.

Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a looper living the life. He has retirement plans. He has a stash of the currency of his trade. He wields a massive gun called a blunderbuss, lousy at a distance, lethal up close.

And Joe's work is intimate. He stands in a corn field, looking at his watch. A man appears on a drop cloth, hog-tied, his head covered in a sack. Boom.

When Older Joe lands in front of Joe, a pause leads to a chase of cosmic proportions.

Jeff Daniels plays Joe's employer, who is non-too forgiving of loopers letting their older selves escape.

Bruce Willis portrays Older Joe, and the face-offs between Gordon-Levitt and Willis are the stuff of a know-it-all dad and a rebellious son. Only what they share is far more complicated.

Johnson was savvy enough to know Gordon-Levitt's brown eyes are the wrong kind of asset here. The gray eyes of his character make him not quite the actor we love in movies from "(500) Days of Summer" to "50.50" to "The Dark Knight Rises."

"Looper" has more heart than "Brick" and the 2008 con-man flick "The Brothers Bloom." Both fine achievements, they could also be described as viscerally cerebral.

Much of that warmth comes by way of Emily Blunt. Her Sara is the vigilant mother of a strangely gifted young boy who Older Joe is sure holds the key to his future.
