Loop the loop

Rating: 4/10 (10 February 2013)

I like science-fiction and in particular plots involving time-travel but with this film was too much put off by the for me, over-complicated plot and unlike-ability of the lead character in all his incarnations.
That main character, played largely by Joseph Gordon-Leavitt is a futuristic assassin who waits at an appointed place and time in the past to ruthlessly shoot down in cold blood, bound and blindfolded mob victims conveniently sent back in time to be dispatched by time-travel controlling gangsters.This routine of ritual murder was played out too many times for me to be effective and actually ended up being offensive. Moreover, Leavitt's character gives you no other reason to care for or even like him, living a hedonistic drugs and girls-fuelled life-style. Just when you think he's about to show a degree of loyalty to a hunted-down friend and colleague, he obligingly turns him in under hardly the strongest of intimidation by admittedly still imposing gang master Jeff Daniels.
Things get further complicated when he encounters his future-self, played by Bruce Willis, out on a back-in-time mission to take out the infant who has later grown up to be the murderer of his wife. Said child is cooped up in a rambling wooden house Deepintheheartofnowhere,being brought up in between violent mood-swings by his tomboy, gun-toting young mom. The story lines converge around a surprising twist at the end, but not before a lot of hootin' and-a-shootin' takes place.
I tried really hard to keep up with the plot but kept getting skewered by awkwardly-placed events of little apparent relevance or merit, particularly a gratuitous out-of-nowhere sex scene between Leavitt and Blunt, the possible incestuous overtones of which don't bear thinking about.
Like I said earlier, none of the characters evoked any sympathy or even interest in me and I found the violence brutal and over-bearing, deadening my faculties long before the end. It's set up of course for old-hand Willis to steal the show, tooled up like it was the 80's again, but I'm not sure there was much of a show here to steal in the first place.