Fun if you don't think about it too hard

Rating: 7/10 (4 October 2012)

Take the most mundane parts of the Matrix, Timecop, Terminator, and Akira and blend them up to make Looper. The cast is great. The acting is great. The little boy was awesome. The story was only alright and oddly a little predictable, but I can't imagine how people are saying that there are no plot holes. The biggest for me is that if you have the ability to force someone into a machine that can bend time and space, why do you need some putz with a gun on the other side to shoot them? Why not just send them into space, or the center of the earth, or ... basically anywhere besides a field 30 years in the past where someone has to shoot them before they can run away? The machine itself would inherently have the ability to just zap them into nothingness. It's a little like if 70's gangsters would stuff people into an SR-71 Blackbird jet, and fly them at Mach 3 to New Zealand so some sheep farmer could chase them down and hit them on the head with a hammer. The setup was supposed to be that it's impossible to kill someone in the future-future, but then people are getting shot willy-nilly during the main character's later life. So we're supposed to believe that future gangsters have access to time machines, but the only way they can think to use them is to send people back into the past to be shot? That's just too stupid. Sorry. I would still recommend seeing it for the acting, but that's probably not high praise for a sci-fi action thriller.