REVIEW OF LOOPER

year: 2012 cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis rating: ***1/2

Any story dealing with time travel must have a ton of exposition to make things clear. But what LOOPER provides is, once we know the situation… of a future where bad guys are sent back in time where hit men quickly take them out… it’s all about Bruce Willis, as the older version of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Joe, and his quest to… set things straight in the future.

But before this we have Joe’s workaday life as a hired gun – known as a Looper – and some of the politics involved within the department, run by a bearded (and one particular scene-stealing) Jeff Daniels. It’s when Willis returns to the past and Levitt can’t pull the trigger – that’s when the race is on.

What’s at first confusing clears up when we follow Levitt’s life till he ages into Willis, who lives with his wife and, after a bloodbath by a vicious crime lord, Willis, back in the present, has to find this kingpin... who isn't quite powerful yet... Or is he? Here’s where the movie, entering love interest Emily Blunt as an independent farmer with her son, turns into a bionic version of THE OMEN, and the disbelief gets tougher to suspend. But when you center on young and old Joe battling each other – trying not to be killed by their vicious employers – the backstory doesn’t matter. It’s really about the action and a reliable performance by Bruce Willis, who looks great for his age and can still get around, and especially Levitt… Despite having to pull off a Willis imitation for the storyline he’s his own person – this is really his film.