Looper (2012)

The future in this movie is not quite as dystopian as has been depicted in 'The Road' or 'The Book of Eli', but it is not an improvement on what we have now.  The plot line is simple and a bit gruesome--time travel is illegal, but crime syndicates use it to cover up their hits--they send the victim back to a time and place, the hit man is already there, they kill him on arrival, and strapped to the victims back is the pay off--bars of silver.  The hit men are known as Loopers, hence the name of the film.  The time travel is well described and it is not necessary to read the Wikipedia summary of the movie prior to watching it in order to follow the plot (which is what I wished I have done with 'Inception').

The story takes place between 2044 and 2074--which gives us two versions of the main character, Joe.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the younger Joe and Bruce Willis plays the older Joe.  Older Joe has come back to 2044 in order to prevent something from happening in the future--the murder of his wife.  His goal is to prevent that murder by killing the child who grows up to be his wife's killer.  Young Joe is trying to prevent that, and the crime syndicate is trying to stop both of them--so plenty of shoot-'em-up action, which is the key attraction of this film.  The story of the future killer as a young man is unexpected, as is the ending, and the film is very entertaining in a diversionary way.