You could spend a fair bit of time unpicking the logic of this time-travel thriller, which redefines the phrase "suicide mission" as a hitman ponders killing his older self sent back from the future.
But best save that for after the movie. Because this fresh reinventive genre-bender isn't just there to confound you with how past actions might affect the present. Or how time-travel, in the wrong hands, could lead to all sorts of unintended consequences. Though it does a pretty good job of all that.
No, while Looper presents with some engaging zen equations - if you decide not to do something because your future self told you you should, does he instantly lose the memory of having done it? - it's also a movie memorable for its characters, unpredictable storyline and how it reconfigures its influences into something fresh.
Though it starts out in a American Midwest noir underworld of 2044, where Gordon-Levitt Joe is a "Looper" - an executioner for a mob that sends its victims back from 2074 to be disposed of - it eventually becomes a late 21st century Western too, with shades of the likes of Shane as the story shifts to a farmhouse where Joe finds he must protect solo mum Emily Blunt (great, again) and her oddball young son.
That's after Joe has come face-to-face with his future self (Willis) who has been sent back to be killed. Only Joe senior has other plans and has had a lot more practice at his chosen trade.
