In the near future, time travel is controlled by criminals. It's difficult to dispose of bodies in their time, so they send people back in time who need to be killed with a bag over their head; killers called "loopers" wait for the target to arrive back in their time, shoot them on sight, dispose of the body in the past where no one will look for it, and collect gold for their duties. Joe, one such looper, lives an easy life as a result of his occupation. One day, his friend Seth tells him his future self was sent back, got him to hesitate, and told him of a man in the future called The Rainmaker, who controls all crime syndicates and is killing off all loopers. Seth is eventually caught and killed for allowing his target to escape. When Joe's older self comes back, he is prepared: he blocks Young Joe's shot and escapes. We see that Old Joe lived a full life, found love, and was living in China when the Rainmaker captured him and had his wife killed. Old Joe overpowered his captors and decided to come back in time to kill the Rainmaker as a kid in order to save his wife in the future. He's narrowed it down to three different locations in the city, so he'll kill the children at all three addresses. Young Joe must stop Old Joe, not only because he believes killing children is wrong, but because if he doesn't, his employers will track him down and kill him. When Young Joe falls for a young woman whose child very well may be the Rainmaker, he's left with a moral dilemma: kill a child now, or suffer in the future?
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Best part of story, including ending:
It's such a marvelously smart and complex script, filled to the brim with quippy one-liners and serious ethical conversations. The effects are crisp and the performances are deep.
Best scene in story:
Seth's older self is killed when the younger Seth is captured and has his body parts removed one at a time, causing them to disappear from the old version. It's a clever, suspenseful, horrifying sequence.
Opinion about the main character:
Young Joe has a very real conflict to deal with. Is the future locked in stone? Is killing a child ever justified? These are tough subjects to debate, and we side with our hero's struggles.
