Looper is a 2012 American science fiction action thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson and starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt. In the film, time travel is invented by the year 2074 (although it is immediately outlawed) and is used by criminal organizations to send those they want killed into the past where they are killed by "loopers" – assassins paid with silver bars strapped to their targets. Joe, a looper, encounters himself when his older self is sent back in time to be killed.