2012 - LOOPER, very entertaining time travel thriller.

 The writer/director Rian Johnson is a very clever fellow.  Lately he's been concentrating on mysteries involving his character Benoit Blanc a apparently gay upscale private detective.  Looper was Johnson's third film and it was a combination of a science fiction time travel story and a thriller. 

The plot involves a criminal organization with a time machine who use it to send people they want killed back in time.  After the victim arrives in the past a hit man is waiting to kill him which will in effect erase him from existing in the future.  One of the hit men  played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt awaits his next victim who when he arrives back in time turns out to be his older self played by Bruce Willis.  Willis manages to escape being killed by his younger self and as they say let the fun of this elaborate plot begin.

 

Joseph Gordon Lewis is very good as the younger assassin trying to sort out this time travel paradox mess.  Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis as usual apparently his motivation in this film was hie ten million dollar paycheck.  There is a subplot involving Emily Blunt playing a mother with a son who has powerful if undeveloped  telekinetic powers that eventually figures into the plot as well.

 

Rian Johnson's inspiration for this story probably was Brian DePalms's Carrie, the very clever Spanish thriller Timecrimes and Shane Carruth's Primer one of the most complicated time travel films I have ever seen.  If I have a criticism of this film it's mostly because it turns into another tiresome Bruce Willis Die Hard type shoot-em up.  Was this in the screenplay?  Did Bruce Willis insist on a large scale action scene as was usually the case with his films?  Anyway annoying as the Bruce Willis bloodbath is it is it doesn't ruin the film.

The film was a financial success and led to Rian Johnson's next film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the only one of the recent trilogy that was any good.  Looper is a very good commercial entertainment that doesn't insult the audience's intelligence for a change.

The running time for Looper is 118 minutes.