Suspend belief and enjoy the ride

Rating: Null/10 (29 September 2012)

Shanghai, 2074 - 55 year old Joseph Simmons (Bruce Willis) is sent back 30 years through time travel to be assassinated at the wish of a criminal fraternity which doesn't want the inconvenience of a body in a future when murder is hard to hide. Kansas, 2044 - 25 year old Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt with a nose made to look like that of Wilis) is the eponymous looper whose job is to kill those sent to him for execution, even if it is his older self (a process known as 'closing the loop'). London, 2012 - I enter the cinema excited to see a movie which has received such tremendous reviews but aware that the plotting is going to hurt my head.
Writer and director Rian Johnson has given us a wonderfully inventive narrative, but the trouble with time travel movies is that you struggle to understand all the rules and reconcile all the contradictions and then you realise that, try as you might, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
But suspend belief and enjoy the ride for this is an exciting and well-plotted story that grabs you from the beginning and never stops shaking you up. As well as the two leads (good to see Willis still credible as the hard man after so long and encouraging to see Gordon-Levitt's growing success), there are some good support roles, notably Jeff Daniels playing against type as a vicious criminal overlord and the ever-watchable Emily Blunt eschewing her cut-glass English accent for a passable Kansas one.
And then there is that cute kid ((Pierce Gagnon) who may not be quite as innocent as he looks. A particularly enjoyable scene is when Old Joe meets Young Joe in a diner which reminded me a little of when Robert de Niro and Al Pacino meet in a similar setting in "Heat".