There’s some very original ideas in Looper, but the film doesn’t endear itself to the viewer.

Loopers are highly paid killers. The twist is that they kill people from 30 years in the future. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays our hero looper and his job consists of waiting in a field, with his rather large gun pointed at a laid out sheet of plastic. At a certain time the victim appears suddenly on the plastic and our hero immediately blasts him away.

His time-travelling victims are bound and hooded, so he doesn’t know who they are. But one day, the looper knows, his victim will be himself, 30 years older, giving a whole new meaning to the term “closing the loop.” However, when himself shows up, played by Bruce Willis and not wearing a hood, Gordon-Levitt hesitates and Willis escapes his assassination.

As you can imagine this creates certain complications in his life, or rather, their lives. Another complication is the character played by Emily Blunt, who lives on a remote farm with her young son, who has these amazing telekinetic powers. Gordon-Levitt shows up hunting Willis, and falls in love with Blunt.

Yes, the film is clever, and more intelligent than most time-travelling tales. The cast is good, especially Gordon-Levitt, who’s having a great 2012. And you can’t help but admire the inescapable logic of the ending. But the movie is hard to like because no character is very likable, and there is a lot of emotionless killing going on.

Rating: three deer out of five

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Alf Cryderman is a Red Deer freelance writer and old movie buff.