153 - Looper

    In the near future, an unusual assassin runs into the older version of himself, who wants to prevent his wife from getting killed.  From there, things get more complicated, and more difficult to talk about without spelling too much of the movie out.
    The plot of the movie is nowhere near as complicated as I thought it would be.  It does involve time travel, and the effects that events in the present have on the future, or on future versions of specific people.  But there's some dialogue near the middle of the movie that addresses this, when Bruce Willis tells his younger counterpart not to talk about it.  It's just a big distraction from getting things done.
    There are a few interesting things to consider about this movie.  First, it involves the murder of a child.  Second, because of that murder, the audience is put into an unusual situation regarding who they are supposed to root for.  I found this to be an interesting ambiguity.  Every character has reasonable motivations, so their conflicts make perfect sense.  And since no one seems to have a broader plan than achieving their immediate goal, it's hard to say that any character achieving their goal would fix things.
    It's rare that movies write conflicts this well.  If it doesn't seem like anyone is being unreasonable, everything plays naturally.

    The world building of the movie is handled really well.  It's much more familiar than a movie like Blade Runner is, but it's also got just enough small twists and details to suggest that a lot of things happened in the meantime.  I noticed a detail late in the movie, that a truck has a hose connected to the gas tank, which runs around the back bumper.  It isn't clear what this does, but it implies that there was some innovation.
    I was very happy with this movie, but I also wonder how well it holds up to repeated viewings.  I think I might like to see it every now and then, as I forget about how it plays out.