Even those who consider themselves movie-lovers have a genre which they don't care for. (For me, it's westerns -- never saw the point in them.) Does any genre divide viewers more than time travel movies? On the one hand, they can present awesome ideas in which characters move through time to solve problems and have great adventures. On the other hand, they are often incredibly confusing, confounding, and can produce more "Do what now?"s than every other genre put together. Even the best time travel movies are in danger if the audience is allowed to stop and think about what is happening. Looper presents some of these moments (of course it does), but it also brings some new idea to the genre and shows that a great idea can only be the jumping off place for a creative film.

Looper takes place in the year 2044. Thirty years beyond that time, time travel will have been invented, but it's highly illegal. When the mobsters of that time want to murder someone, they send that person back to 2044 where an assassin known as a "looper" shoots the victim and then disposes of the body. The loopers are paid in bars of silver. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a looper and he enjoys the money, drugs, and women which comes with the job. He plays by the rules and he's saving his money for the future. However, Joe's world is rocked when what is supposed to be just another job turns out to be himself from the future. This older version of Joe (played by Bruce Willis) is not an ordinary victim. He's traveled back in time on a mission and now Joe must attempt to track and stop his older self from doing something which could disrupt the timeline as we know it.

It's interesting to note that Rian Johnson is credited as the only writer on Looper, as the film has the feel of a movie where two writers with competing storylines attempted to put them together. The first half of the film is concerned with the plot which is described above and which was revealed in the trailers for the movie -- Joe comes face-to-face with his future self, someone he was mean to kill. Let's face it, this is a brilliant idea and that concept alone probably sold the script. But, then we have the second part of the movie. Once the time travel idea and its rules have been firmly situated, the story focuses on the mission which Joe from the future is there to complete. This makes younger Joe, who is normally only interested in girls, drugs, and money, have to face some tough questions and learn to care about someone other than himself. This turn takes what could have been a cold, action-based sci-fi movie and gives it some emotional roots. Thus, when the fairly surprising finale occurs, we actually feel something.

Johnson must also be commended for adding some depth to the script. I have to admit, I haven't seen or read every time travel story ever created, but Looper contained some very clever ideas which I'd never come across before. Johnson introduces some interesting notions about how an individual would be effected if their counterpart from another time was in their present and these concepts lead to some of the cooler scenes in the movie. He has also made Joe a complex character. Most likely because of who we've seen Joseph Gordon-Levitt play in the past, we expect to like Joe. But, as noted above, Joe has a lot of vices and he's truly an outlaw. Thus, as his character grows emotionally in the story, we begin to like him more and more. In a truly unique twist, we begin to have the exact opposite feelings about older Joe. Again, fleshing out the characters and adding some emotional weight makes a world of difference in this film.

Having said that, Looper does have its share of minor problems. As with any time travel movie, some viewers are going to get confused, while others will have very legitimate questions, such as instead of sending their victims back in time 30 years, why doesn't the mob send them to prehistoric times where they won't be missed? While I normally don't mind the blending of genres, I didn't like how the henchmen in the film looked like cowboys. Even though the story is set in the midwest, it still felt like Johnson went one step too far in that aspect. The makeup and contact lenses used to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like Bruce Willis doesn't really work and it's distracting in the shot just before the two meet -- Gordon-Levitt looks more like a vampire than Bruce Willis in that shot where he just keeps staring into the camera.

These small issues aside, Looper is a satisfying sci-fi movie...which is odd to say, because it doesn't really feel like a sci-fi movie. I was disappointed by Brick, Rian Johnson's debut, but he's actually added some new blood to the time travel genre with Looper and that's to be commended. The movie offers some nicely done action set-pieces, a palpable sense of menace, and good acting all around. Even if you don't buy the basic premise, there's still plenty to like here and this film should give us faith that Hollywood is still willing to gamble on a good idea every now and then.

Looper will easily give you a headache if you think about it too much on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 32 Mbps. The image is very sharp and clear, showing no distracting grain or defects from the source materials. The colors look good and the image is never overly dark or bright. Several scenes take place outside in the daylight and these shots have a crispness which looks as if we could walk into them. The depth is excellent and the actors are clearly separated from the backgrounds. The level of detail is very good as well. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. This active track brings us a nice amount of surround and stereo effects. The action scenes deliver impressive surround effects which bring us individual sounds. We also get a nice array of stereo effects, including some nice ones which alert us to sounds off-screen. The subwoofer effects are also prominent, most notably those during the finale and those which signal the time travel. Overall, a nice technical package.

The Looper Blu-ray Disc contains a selection of extra features. We begin with an AUDIO COMMENTARY from Writer/Director Rian Johnson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt. The Disc contains twenty-two DELETED SCENES which run about 37 minutes and can be viewed with COMMENTARY from Johnson and actor Noah Segan. "The Future from the Beginning" (8 minutes) is a making-of featurette which gives some minor details about the creation and development of the script and then profiles each of the major characters and actors. It then looks at how Gordon-Levitt was made to look like Willis. "The Science of Time Travel" (8 minutes) contains comments from author Brian Clegg, who has written about the physics of time travel. There are comments from the cast and crew about the possibilities of time travel. "Scoring Looper" (16 minutes) is a three-part piece which focuses on the film's music. Composer Nathan Johnson gives an overview of how he used sound effects and percussion to create the score. (These three videos look as if they were shown on-line.) "Animated Trailer" (94 seconds) is a very arty and interpretive preview for the film.