Had Potential

Rating: 4/10 (17 March 2013)

This was a pretty good concept and when the film started I thought I could've been in for something special. Unfortunately it seems like a concept was mostly all they had, because this movie simply doesn't hold up the further along you get into it.
The first 1/3 to 1/2 of the movie is pretty entertaining. You've got the looper concept which is new, and even though it doesn't make complete sense the film moves at a brisk pace so although you might have some issues with how time travel works in this universe you can set it aside and just enjoy yourself. After a certain point in the run time though the movie just loses where it wants to go, or they decided to go in a direction that doesn't serve what they've built up to this point all that well.
Soon after Bruce Willis inserts himself into the plot the movie starts unraveling somewhat. We are given each character's motivations, but not shown much to prove them. Characters who are absolutely crucial to the plot show up halfway through. We are told of a character or characters that will have an immense impact on the life of the main character Joe, but most of it is only alluded to and we just have to take the film's word for it.
This could've actually been a sweeping, epic 3 hour journey and it may have paid off to take that risk and film the movie as such. I say that because some plot points are breezed past very quickly and a good bit of emotion that should've shone through doesn't.
One dynamic of the movie I felt was new and unique was when Joe meets his older self (Bruce Willis). Bruce is trying to convince Joe that he has to take certain action to keep his future intact, but Joe isn't interested because that's his old self's life and not really his own. This brings up a lot of interesting questions. If you could communicate with yourself 30 years into the future, would you take their advice so your life would turn out a certain way or ignore them in order for things to turn out naturally? The movie doesn't explore this beyond one scene, and it's not the main focus of the story, but it could've been.
One final criticism: You cannot have a movie about time travel and then whenever characters are forced to deal with the implications of it, have them say "Don't start talking about all that time travel stuff, it'll just make our heads spin." That's unforgivable. It's like having a character shoot someone in the head from 10 miles away and when another character asks how they can do that, they reply "You wouldn't understand." No, no, no. Unacceptable. You need to address those things or you don't have a story. Nevermind the fact that a lot of people are going to see this movie based on those types of conversations. It makes the plot more interesting not less!
Overall hardcore sci-fi fans will hate this movie but most people might enjoy it. Other than Bruce Willis killing children (offscreen but still), it's a 'meh' Hollywood product that will entertain those that don't think too hard about these sorts of things. For me even though I am a big sci-fi fan I was able to forgive the plot holes but only until the movie started dragging and took an odd turn. At that point it just added up to a somewhat nonsensical experience that didn't stick with me at all.