Review: ‘Looper’ is an ingenious take on time travel

Yes, “Looper” is a time travel movie. But before you start groaning about “not another one,” let me assure you. This is a very clever take on time travel.

The futuristic action film starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt is about a hitman from the future.

It’s ingenious.

Not only has it been invented in the future, that invention has real world consequences in the present of the movie which is itself set in the future – 2044 to be exact.

In the film, a looper kills people from the future who are sent back in time to be eliminated. These loopers can’t be charged with a crime because the people they kill don’t exist in their time.

Complications arise, however, when Gordon-Levitt has to kill himself, or rather his 30-years-in-the-future self, who happens to be played by Bruce Willis. By the way, Willis is dead set against being offed by his younger self or anyone else, for that matter.

What’s so satisfying about “Looper” is that it uses the time-travel conceit as a device to explore a lot of ethical issues.

First off, imagine confronting yourself, either younger or older. With life and death on the line, which would sacrifice what for the other? And then, beyond issues of one’s self, if you knew that in the future someone would be doing terrible things, would you be willing to kill him before he’d done anything bad? What if that person was still a child?

These kinds of moral dilemmas are presented in the context of a thriller with lots of action sequences. In other words, there’s plenty of fighting and shooting and car chases.

About two-thirds of the way through the movie, I began wondering if it was just going to devolve into your standard action climax, leaving all the ethical questions in limbo. Instead, “Looper” ends with a flourish, providing a satisfying resolution to a tricky proposition.