10. Joe - Looper
TriStar PicturesWhile Rian Johnson's Looper is primarily an exercise in twisty time-travel plotting, at the center of it all is a character who would be just another gangster - if not for the premise of the film. There is no hitman in film that has had to confront such a strangely existential conundrum - having to face off with oneself. In many ways, Joe is a lot like a sic-fi version of Henry Hill - hooked on drugs and thinking he's a rockstar amongst a bunch of ordinary schmucks. As a "Looper", he is assigned to dispose of people for gangsters of the future, which is quite a lucrative gig, apparently. He kills people from the future with no remorse or emotional qualms, despite knowing in the back of his head that he'll be assigned to kill himself one of these days. Joe isn't really a sympathetic character until he meets his older self. When these two Joes meet, they provide an excellent picture of this man's life - the young and rash version of Joe talking to the older and more mature one. While he doesn't linger too long on the existential problems posed by his mission, he finds himself coming into conflict with his future self's goal - the murder of a future Kingpin in the form of an eight year old child. Young Joe's solution to the conflict is both heartfelt and redemptive in the best way possible for his type of person, but it in no way makes us forget how heartfelt his older version's motivation was.