One Loopy Looper

Rating: 1/10 (12 February 2013)

Looper garners a richly deserved "dumb and a half" rating with this reviewer. Now viewers get that time travel is not possible, never will be, as proved by the fact that the present isn't already overpopulated with temporal tourists from the future. We're ready to set aside belief on this point in exchange for a decent, believable storyline: the first rule of verisimilitude. Unfortunately in this loopy story we are supposed to believe that it's impossible to kill someone in the future so organized crime sends its trash back to the present for disposal and incineration by hired guns called 'loopers.' So we viewers are supposed to buy into the idea that the bad-asses of the future are daft on top of nasty. Wouldn't they just hire a single guy to keep the fires burning and time-zap their chosen victims directly into the fire? Or dispense with that expense and ferry the intended directly into the fiery maw of a fusion reactor? Since they seem able to direct location as well as instance with their illegal chicken-wire-lined time machine couldn't they then just ship undesirables off into the earth's core, outer space or a studio session of the Ellen show?
Now let's deal with the syrupy implication that our hero's final act saves the dopey telekinetic kid from a life of crime, allowing him to turn his special powers towards the betterment of humanity. Come on, with a little self-control, this kid's powers are tailor-made for evil and destruction. The best he can hope for by going over to the bright side is for a life of picking up litter wholesale, maybe popping the odd litterbug's head for sport and punitive measure once in a while. That's it. While his powers are awesome, they have little value outside of the underworld.
If you value your time set your own time-machine on bypass for this stinker.