Review of Looper (2012) by Mike S — 01 Dec 2014

Time-travel stories are tricky. You have to be very careful not to create narrative contradictions. Looper is a story where mobsters from the future send their victims back to the present to be killed. Complications arise when one such target (Bruce Willis as "Old Joe") escapes from his assassin, who turns out to be his younger self (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as "Joe"). Old Joe has a motive for wanting to carry out an assassination of his own in the present, while Joe needs to complete his contract or face dire consequences.

So far, so good. But a key plot point is that things Joe does to himself, like injure himself, affect Old Joe at the same time. If Joe gets a scar, Old Joe sees the same scar appear on his own body. Meanwhile, Old Joe, by interfering in Joe's present, is erasing his own past. The problem I have is that only some of Joe's actions, those that advance the plot, seem to affect Old Joe. This property is inconsistent, and therefore distracting.

Still, the idea is ambitious and the performances and look and feel of the film are good. It's not a bad film, just flawed in its logic.