Looper is a time-travel movie that satisfies audiences without causing headaches

Christian Read
Staff Writer 

The problem with understanding time travel is that it hasn’t been invented yet. Science fiction movies often have extreme difficulty in portraying the physics and paradoxes of meddling with the past.

As far as the new action movie Looper goes, the director (Rian Johnson) did a good job at covering the basics and guiding the rest of the focus on the plot.

The movie opens by showing the life of Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). He is tasked by the mob of the future to kill and dispose of anonymous targets. When Joe’s time comes to “close the loop” – and kill his future self (Bruce Willis) – he chokes, allowing future-tense Joe to escape.

The movie is full of shockers and surprises, proving that the film industry is still capable of turning a good idea into a great movie. Although keeping up with the time differences can be challenging at first, the movie is put together quite well. As long as you don’t focus on the time paradox that seems to be created, the plot itself is actually both exciting and moving.

Some may be left wondering if the story is as confusing as the 2010 movie Inception was. Many people ended up seeing that in theaters twice, just to try to understand the story. Luckily, Looper is not one of those kinds of movies: the plot centers around the character struggles more than it does around the maintenance of time. Anyone can and should go enjoy this movie, without worrying about developing a serious headache afterwards.