In the year 2044, time travel hasn’t been invented. But 30 years later it will have been. It will be immediately outlawed and only used by large criminal organizations to get rid of bodies. See, in the future, it is extremely difficult to dispose of bodies, but in 2044 it isn’t so hard. The organizations send people that they want “taken care of” to the past, where specialized assassins called loopers shoot them and dispose of the body.

This is the premise of the new film Looper, from writer-director Rian Johnson.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the Joe, a looper who one day gets his own future self sent back to him. This is called “closing the loop,” and once a looper closes his loop he gets a big payday and 30 years of guaranteed easy life.  However, Joe hesitates and does not immediately shoot his future self, played by Bruce Willis, who then manages to escape. The rest of the movie is centered around the younger Joe trying to track down and kill his older self.

The movie is impressive because although there is a lot of action, the characters are still well-developed and the plot always makes sense. There is a lot of subtle humor, and some excellent supporting performances from Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels. Time travel is often a hard subject to pull off in movies because the logic is so confusing, but Rian Johnson managed to cover all of his bases, and my attempts to find logical errors proved futile. The ending is surprising but it wraps up all of the films loose ends neatly. I would recommend the movie for fans of sci-fi action who also like character-driven stories.