Bruce Willis is in it - what could possibly go wrong?

Rating: 8/10 (2 October 2012)

Absolutely not what I expected and all the better for it. All the comparisons with Blade Runner, Star Wars etc make no sense at all. I went in expecting lots of CGI, vehicle chases and so and thankfully I got only a modicum of each. No one whacked me over the head with a set piece that was so loud and filmed so close up and in blur-o-vision that it made no sense whatsoever. No one told me there was a 3D version and I had to see that. No one told me I had to see three and a half prequels to fully understand it.
Instead I got a good old-fashioned film with a story, dialogue and not everything explained to me in scene one for fear that I might be an idiot. That is not to say that the story itself, the science or the time travel made any sense whatsoever. You just have to go with it. If you can't buy it then don't bother going. We all think we know how time travel works, paradoxes, altering a tiny bit of the past changing a huge chunk of the future blah, blah, blah. In truth we don't know – half of what we know we've learned from other books and films and the other half is based on our limited understanding of physics. I'm pretty sure the "science" in this film is wrong but your guess is as good as mine. I like the approach which says – we really don't know so we'll do it this way and not worry about complex explanations.
It's not going to change your life and I really don't believe you'll be remembering this 20 years in the future like you remember the old classics like Blade Runner. (Unless and until the studios find a way travelling back in time and changing your memories of what you saw – they could wipe out all the classics and just leave you thinking their usual product was genius. I digress, but I do have an idea for a screenplay!) It's fun and you'll probably enjoy it unless you are a physics maven or unless your expectation of the ratio of explosions to story have been irretrievably warped by recent films