by Nick Growall

Staff writer

Time travel is no new invention to cinema. From “12 Monkeys” to “Back to the Future” to “Terminator” and the many versions of “A Christmas Carol,” the idea has been interpreted many different ways. The challenge in today’s world is to keep it fresh and engaging to audiences, and Rian Johnson’s “Looper” has succeeded in this endeavor.

Set in the near future, according to the film, time travel is invented by the year 2074. Though immediately outlawed, it is used by the mob to send those they want killed into the past where they are killed by “loopers,” assassins paid with silver bars strapped to their targets.

The story centers around Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a looper who encounters himself when his older self (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time to be killed. With the mob on the hunt for both men, young Joe takes refuge at the home of single mother Sara (Emily Blunt) and her son, one of several children who the older Joe believes to be The Rainmaker, a mastermind who has taken over future organized crime and is closing all loops.

Although the plot is centered around it, the movie doesn’t muddle itself in trying to explain how time travel works. It’s simply presented as an everyday part of life, along with the other subtle advances in technology that quietly fill up the background of a plausible future. What this does is allow for the story and its characters to take center stage, proving to be an emotional and thought-provoking film.

Gordon-Levitt (“The Dark Knight Rises,” “500 Days of Summer”) may not look exactly like Willis, and the makeup at times doesn’t do much to convince us of this, but he makes up for it with his imitation of Willis’ mannerisms and speech. Gordon-Levitt proves he has the acting chops to go with his looks and shows he can handle leading man status with this performance.

Willis (“Die Hard,” “The Sixth Sense”) is no stranger to time-travel, starring in Terry Gilliam’s time-jumping “12 Monkeys” back in 1995. Willis brings his usual tough guy persona to the film but truly shines in the film due to his touching portrayal of the older Joe as a world-weary, heartbroken man willing to do anything to change his past.

Through an impressive sequence in which we see Gordon-Levitt grow up to become Willis, we quickly learn what shaped old Joe into the man he is now. What we see when the two men finally meet is a large contrast between old Joe and Gordon-Levitt’s cocky, unlikeable, drug-addict. Yet the story’s main arc lies in young Joe’s accelerated maturation while at the farmhouse with Sara and her son, realizing that what he thought was important in life may not be after all.

The film brings up several thought-provoking issues, such as the “Hitler’s murder paradox,” a common troupe of time-travel fiction which asks what would happen if someone went back in time to assassinate a tyrant or villain of the future before their rise to power. Such a question is the kind that could only exist in the world of science-fiction, yet in lesser hands, would probably be mishandled and overcomplicated.

But “Looper” succeeds in dealing with such heavy issues by letting story and character take the lead, leaving the special effects in the background to accent the world the movie dwells in, and by also not getting lost in the scientific psycho-babble that other films of the genre might try to force down its audiences’ throat.

Never once did I feel lost or confused by what was going on, but rather I was impressed and engaged in the story that was presented to me, with plenty of action to hold attention and characters you grow attached to. One of the best of many great sequences in the film involves a runaway looper from the future, and his slow demise by the mob, done in a fresh, fantastical way that only science fiction can deliver, and executed to perfection by director Rian Johnson and his crew.

So before you go out and get your fill of mindless, zombie-filled horror this Halloween season, I highly suggest you check out “Looper,” a sci-fi tale that stands out from the rest due to its hard to find combination of brains and heart.