A very good action movie with a premise that makes little sense

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2012)

I really enjoyed this movie. I was interested right from the beginning and it kept up for most of the film, (except the ending, which was a little too melodramatic), but there were a few things that hindered 'Looper'.
I'm not a fan of information given to the audience without allowing them time to figure things out by themselves, and Looper does do exactly that for the first fifteen minutes through voice over. I understand that casual action film-lovers do not always enjoy thinking while watching movies, but giving the audience the opportunity to work out just what a 'Looper' is and what 'closing your loop means' by reading expressions on character's faces and listening to them talk to each other about these things would have sat better with me.
Despite the premise having a number of holes, it was nothing that ruined the plot. Instead of wading down in working out exactly how time-travel works (as Bruce Willis' character succinctly puts: 'We would be here all day making diagrams with straws'), the film focuses on a great story. I found the tension slowly rising throughout most of the film and there were a number of interesting surprises that kept this film separated from other recent sci-fi action flicks. The idea of a telekinetic 'virus' infecting a small percentage of the population is not simply there to strengthen the near-future society, but instead plays a pivotal role in the plot towards the end of the film.
As I mentioned before, things did get a bit too melodramatic near the end. I was emotionally invested in the well-developed characters for the first three quarters of the film, so I don't really understand why the writers felt the need to write a pretty drawn out 'touchy' scene that actually decreased my sympathy for what was going on.
Despite the ending, I thought this was a very good sci-fi movie