Well, it was full of nonsense, but I enjoyed it.

Rating: 6/10 (17 November 2012)

I'll get on to the nonsense in a moment but first, why did I enjoy it? Mainly because it dealt with themes such as self-sacrifice, personal growth, betrayal, greed and desperation rather well. The main character is inherently unlikeable, but you hope he gets by in the end, nonetheless. In short, take away the scifi elements and it makes a reasonable character drama.
But it has its flaws.
First off it attempts to be a clever scifi movie in the vein of Inception. I applaud the effort. In fact, I wish more movie-makers would try and be clever with their films. I'm seriously tired of mindless pap like Transformers masquerading as 'good scifi'. So any attempt at being intelligent is to be congratulated.
However, they fell at the first hurdle. They chose time-travel. With time travel either you believe there is a single timeline, in which case paradox's cannot exist, or you believe in multiple time lines, in which they can. In the former, things done in the past affect the future and this is what appears to go on in Looper. People send messages to their future selves by scarring their own skin and so on. Unfortunately, Looper starts off assuming the second type. Young Joe, in order to let Old Joe escape, has to also kill Old Joe in the original timeline. This means that when he grows into Old Joe, he can come back, causing a new timeline and escape. However, this also means that, since he is on another timeline, that particular Young Joe isn't him anymore. And, at the end of the movie, it is pretty critical that they are actually one and the same. Phew! So they weren't really sure which they wanted to go with and it does make you say....hang on a minute! That said, the movie is reasonably entertaining. I enjoyed it, despite the lack of a sensible plot. I mean, who is really expected to believe that it's easier to send someone back through time than it is to dispose of them in the future? It's never given more than a moment's explanation and yet, it is the foundation for the whole movie's setup. Its very premise. They could have at least come up with a more solid reasoning behind this, in my opinion.
There was a nice side-plot about Old Joe forgetting his wife if Young Joe fell another woman. However, this seems to have been forgotten about towards the end, which is a shame.
All in all, it is a reasonable watch. As always with time-travel movies, though, it becomes messy and here, it wasn't treated terribly well. Even so, I recommend it. You'll see the end coming from about half-way through the film, but it is still surprisingly satisfying anyway.
SUMMARY: Time-travel, bah humbug! Good characters and drama, try to ignore the premise and ill-thought out science.