Where's Arnie?

Rating: 8/10 (4 October 2012)

In a world where no one can be illegally killed and time travel exists the mob is sending back targets to be disposed of by Loopers. This is until the Loopers have to dispose of their future selves.
Enjoyed this one, we had all-out gun battles that Bruce does very well, we had slow ploddy bits giving time for character development, story and plot and an interesting story to boot - a nice mix of everything.
The whole story is based around time travel, but it didn't linger on this too long. In fact we are given so little in terms of how the time travel works that the film avoids backing itself into corners. This is a good thing at it triggers much Frankie and Bennys Sticky Pasta and pepperoni pizza debating.
We see enough of the future world to hint at how things have developed, but also how some things are identical. The gap between rich and poor has widened and how the cost-of-life has decreased.
All the characters held their own, even the kid put in a good performance. Child actors can either go one of two ways, from Sixth Sense to Wesley Crusher.
There are plenty of nods to other films such as Terminator, 12 Monkeys, Source Code and Primer. In fact at one point it started to get very Terminator-ish and I expected a scared Sarah Connor to make an appearance.
A worthy watch. It's certainly has promoted a great deal of discussion, so in that sense it's serves its purpose very well as a great bit of cinema.
*** Rants *** Spoilers *** Questions *** Rants *** Spoilers *** Questions *** There is little point questioning the time travel mechanics. Since we have nothing to compare against in the real world, script writers are free to make their own rules and abuse them as they see fit. However, there are some bits that don't make much sense...
Why bother with the Loopers? Why not zap someone back into the furnace or a volcano? Job done, no messy shooting yourself or anyone else? Yes, without this we wouldn't have a story to tell, but still...
Why does the kid believe his mum is not his mum, assuming the story we hear from his mum is true? I'm assuming we are dealing with multiple timelines here instead of one big timeloop, as that seems to fit the best. In the original timeline what makes the kid into the Rainmaker? We assume in that timeline Bruce didn't kill mom, because he did this later.
What happens in the timeline where Bruce DOES kill mom? So the kid becomes the Rainmaker but we still have Bruce and young Bruce existing at the same time. Does young Bruce then meet his wife and become old Bruce? Does old Bruce become older Bruce? If so, does older Bruce not track down the kid before he becomes the Rainmaker? Why do the Loopers need to be sent back and killed? There was some explanation on this, but can't remember the reason. Can't they pay them off and they just live out their days? Did Abe create the events to NOT turn the kid into the Rainmaker? So... young Bruce was learning French and wanted to go to France. Abe suggested he go to China instead, which he clearly did. In China Bruce met his wife who then gets killed. Thus giving Bruce the motivation to zap himself back to hunt down the young Rainmaker. Then young Bruce makes sure the mom doesn't get shot by the whole self-sacrifice thing. No dead mom, therefore no Rainmaker.