Joseph Gordon-Levitt Doubles Up on Action Thrillers

By  · Published on May 5th, 2010

By now, you should all know that Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brick, 500 Days of Summer, The Lookout) is awesome. So it’s double awesome news that he’s in negotiations to star in TWO action thrillers! According to Heat Vision, JGL is in final negotiations to star in David Koepp’s (Ghost Town, Secret Window) Premium Rush and also in talks to star in Looper which is Rian Johnson’s (Brick, Brothers Bloom) next film.

Premium Rush will see Gordon-Levitt as a bike messenger in New York who enters a dirty cop’s cross-hairs after picking up a mysterious package from Columbia University. Meanwhile, Looper takes place in a future where time travel has been invented and JGL plays an operative who is sent back in time to preemptively assassinate criminals. The twist? He is sent back in time to kill himself!

Both of these films sound promising but I have a few reservations. With Premium Rush it’s director/writer David Koepp. As a director he has yet to impress (Secret Window? More like Boring Window) and as a writer he has produced some pretty awful garbage lately (Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull). That being said, this story sounds much more…modest than Crystal Skull and, for the most part, JGL appears to be very careful about what scripts he does (The exception being G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra but in all fairness who the heck would turn down a chance to play Cobra Commander? No one). Thus, the fact that JGL is willing to put his name on it bodes pretty well.

As for Looper, it sounds an awful lot like Minority Report meets Terminator. Which I guess is kind of awesome. But then again time travel is pretty well trodden ground. But then again, again, Rian Johnson seems like a directing genius and based on that alone I trust that Looper will probably be pretty darn good. Add on the fact that he’s re-teaming with JGl as his leading man (if you haven’t seen Brick, go check it out ASAP) and you’ve got a recipe for my anticipation.

What do you think of these two new Joseph Gordon-Levitt roles?

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