Looper

We recently saw this new sci-fi flick starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt.  It's a time travel film.  Most of the movie is set in a rather rundown version of America in 2044.  It turns out that in the future time travel has been invented and promptly banned but the mob uses it clandestinely to send back guys it wants rub out from the year 2074 to 2044 where hired killers called "loopers" wait to execute them upon arrival.  Is that clear enough?

Gordon-Levitt plays a looper who lives in the Kansas of 2044 (trust me, if this movie is right you don't want to move to Kansas in the future and if you live there now, get out) and Bruce Willis is his older version sent from 2074 back to Levitt for execution.  So the plot has all your basic time travel conundrums for you.

Bruce Willis is just fine doing his Bruce Willis thing which you either like or don't like (I like) and Gordon-Levitt does a nice job of displaying Willis-like mannerisms in his role.  Plus Jeff Daniels does an enjoyable, but short, turn as an empathetic, yet brutal, mob boss.

While it is better than a lot of futuristic films (the coming attractions featured a couple and they were unwatchable) Looper is depressing.  I bet the director and writer, Rian Johnson, thought the ending was somewhat optimistic but if you take a minute to think through the plot it's not.  It falls in the category of movies I wanted to like more than I did.

I did enjoy how they cut through the usual convoluted explanation of how time travel works which often bogs down movies like this.
If you'd like to see a better Bruce Willis time travel movie take a look at Twelve Monkeys (1995), directed by Terry Gilliam and co-starring Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt.  Warning! - Like Looper it is not a feel-good movie.