7 reasons you should watch and not watch 'Looper'

SALT LAKE CITY — "Looper" is a new film for which the make-up artist should get an Oscar. They made Joseph Gordon-Levitt looker older than 20 and a lot like Bruce Willis, a task not for the faint of heart.

Aside from that, "Looper" is an incredible sci-fi, time-traveling Western. In the dystopian Kansas City of 2044, Levitt plays an assassin whose job is to kill anyone his bosses send back from the future. He disposes of the bodies in return for blocks of silver. The only difficulty is that all kinds of problems arise when your bosses send your future self back to be killed by your own gun, and your future self is as good at killing folks as your present self is.

But, if we are going to try and make sense of the difficulties in parsing out the self-relating loops that are made possible by time travel, and given that there are clearly two distinct but intertwined loops required by the plot of this story, one where Levitt does live and one where he does not, how could that possibly jive with...

"Stop," says Bruce Willis. As in stop thinking about it. Like, literally Bruce Willis pounds the table and tells you to stop thinking about it so hard during the movie. And you should. That pencil you were about to take out to draw a diagram of the possible alternative timelines of when X, Y or Z thing is required to happen...NO. DON'T DO IT. Bruce Willis said not to, and above all, every moviegoer needs to develop a thorough and abiding trust in the things Bruce Willis says and does on the silver screen.

If you do think about that element of the movie too much, you'll lose focus on a story that is loving and tender and full of all the really sappy, heart-rending scenes of self-sacrifice and family responsibility that could very well bring tears to your eyes. Although admittedly those scenes are covered in a thin layer of a dead time traveler's blood. But one makes the other possible, so again, don't worry too much. And it's pretty funny at times. I couldn't fit that fact anywhere else in this review, so it goes here.

How would I rate this movie? One thousand stars. But my opinion isn't all that important in the matter. I'm just trying to give you a good read on whether your present self would want to go see it and whether your future self will have been satisfied. So with that in mind, here are a few reasons you may or may not like "Looper."

You will like this movie if:

• You liked "Brick"
  • File under "Obvious." Also, director Rian Johnson is a master of verbiage and inventing interesting underground jargon, and there's plenty of that.
• You liked "Inception," or "12 Monkeys" but they were a little too complicated for your taste
  • Maybe I should avoid comparing movies to one another, but it's going to happen with this one so we may as well come right out and own it. Netflix will put all of these movies in the category "Mind-bending drama" regardless of what I write here, anyway.
    There are some twists and turns, and a couple elements that might bend the mind ever so slightly. But it's not going to drag you though infinity layers of some guy's dreams and then spit you out fifty years later and leave you wondering whether you are asleep or dead or whatever actually happened in "Inception." "Looper" will twist your brain, but gently, and it will explain everything along the way. And let me just remind you yet again that Bruce Willis, the most trustworthy actor in all of Hollywood, demands right in middle of the film that you not think about it so much.
• You like Westerns
  • This movie is, in a lot of ways, pretty much a modern Western in the same way that "Brick" was a modern film noir detective flick. "Looper" has Western aesthetic and a few very wide-brimmed hats, characters have some twang in their accent, a good chunk of the movie takes place on a prairie farm and it features gunslingers with six-shooters. You really can't get more Western than that.
• You like seeing people get gunned down with dual-wielded machine guns

• "Looper" has Bruce Willis in it, so totally awesome machine gun violence is to be expected. But there's not too much of it, and when it does happen, it's not overly climactic. In general, the violence won't distract from the sentimental, loving elements that are also in the film, which really are much more central to "Looper," and you should do your best to pay more attention to them. But if you forget and just focus on the guns, you'll be pretty satisfied too.

You will not like this movie if:

• You don't have a soul
  • Seriously, it's downright heartwarming at times. "Looper" will give you lots of warm fuzzies. So if you hate those, avoid this film. There's enough blood and machismo to make you think otherwise for a while, but actually this movie is all about love, really deep and all-empowering love. The kind of love that will make you do absolutely anything - just anything at all - for the object of your love. Which means, in short, that it's a tragedy. And who doesn't love/hate a good tragedy? We've been re-hashing ancient tragic plot lines for thousands of years, partly because humans are boring and we don't like change, but partly because those tragedies are pretty good.
• You don't like nudity or excessive violence
  • Those who want to avoid nudity and violence on moral grounds, or simply because they don't enjoy them, need not waste any time on "Looper." It has both, though a lot more violence than nudity, and there's just no beating around the bush to be done. If these things are a deal-breaker, forget about it. Although I'd like to stress that this movie banks on the power of a mother's (that is, Emily Blunt's) love and the self-sacrificing element in good people, and both of those things should be considered family values, which is something worth pointing out.
• You don't like seeing children in uncomfortable situations
  • Children play a big part in "Looper" and uncomfortable situations pop up now and again. Regardless of how cool guns and assassins are in movies, even the most die-hard fan of "Die-Hard" and the bullet-laden action flicks like it know that children are innocent and don't deserve the bad things that happen to them. Rest assured, however, that this movie understands the fact that children are innocent pawns in a crazy and terrifying adult world, and eventually you will emerge from the depths and into the light again.

If there's one thing that's true of "Looper" It's that it is not one of those post-modern, morally relativistic films where anything goes because it's all about the art itself and all that gobbledygook (though it would be easy to make that mistake and you should forgive yourself in advance for possibly having made it). In other words, "Looper" is not like this review. It's a thoroughly traditional Western with good guys and bad guys and it's clear who wins and why.

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