4. Future Joe - Looper
Looper was, for my money, the best film of 2012, complex, emotionally engaging, and thoroughly intelligent, all topped by two excellent performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and in his best turn for countless years, Bruce Willis as Gordon-Levitt's future equivalent. Future Joe is the "villain" of the piece, though his motivations are totally understandable; his wife is murdered in his present, and when he has his loop closed - whereby he is to be sent back in time to be killed by his past self - he manages to knock young Joe unconscious and flee. His plan? To track down the dangerous ruler of the future, The Rainmaker, who is closing all of the loops in the future; if he can kill the Rainmaker when he's a child, then he can presumably prevent the death of his wife. The complicated moral mess of it all makes for a hugely compelling drama; the moment that Joe murders a child before realising that it was the wrong one is utterly devastating, and even right at the film's climax, he's an affecting, personable character.