Speculative enterprise

Rating: 8/10 (2 October 2012)

When one deals with time travel as the process has not been discovered everything written or filmed about is always speculative. For instance the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Time Cop shows something quite different when we meet our future and past selves as Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis do here in Looper.
Instead of the forces of law and latent fascism getting control of time travel in Time Cop, Looper has organized crime doing it and eliminating problems that Robert DeNiro in Casino remarked are usually swallowed up by the Nevada desert. Levitt is a Looper one who travels ahead to the future, specifically trained as an assassin and then goes back to his present origin and as targets come through a time portal, they get eliminated. Then at some point, the future selves are eliminated and the present selves just go on with normal lives as we define normal.
Bruce Willis is Levitt's future self only he doesn't like the idea of elimination. And the big boss Jeff Daniels doesn't like how Levitt screwed up the elimination of Willis. The chase is on.
Another question answered by Laurence Olivier in The Boys From Brazil said that we should not eliminate a cloned Hitler. Here a telekinesis gene has entered our gene pool and someone in the distant future has been harnessing its full potential to battle organized crime. That's an even bigger mission that the Levitt/Willis problem.
Looper is a nice and original take on time travel with an outstanding cast giving some standout performances. Note particularly Emily Blunt as the mother of young Pierce Gagnon who has powers and abilities far beyond those of other mortal beings. And young Gagnon is something to see as well.
Looper is definitely worth the price of admission.