In regard to his film history, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a newcomer to the time-traveling and gunslinging scene.

The heartthrob, who recently played up his sex appeal as the host of “Saturday Night Live,” seems to enter foreign territory in the futuristic action thriller “Looper.” It doesn’t help that the actor, whose pain we all felt in the romantic comedy “(500) Days of Summer,” sports a cosmetically altered nose in order to more closely resemble his futuristic doppelganger, played by Bruce Willis. The result is an awkward fusion of Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino.

It would be easy to write off a film with such unfortunately comedic makeup decisions, but the movie’s saving grace is the tightly written and impossibly compelling screenplay by Rian Johnson, who also directed the film.

The film is set in a dystopian 2044 that takes a view of the future more akin to “Children of Men” than “I, Robot,” with settings and scenery far less fantastic and, in a lot of ways, anachronistic. This makes the focus of the plot that much more surreal. In the film, time travel has been perfected and is used almost exclusively by the mob.

Gordon-Levitt plays a contract killer or “looper” named Joe, whose job is to murder “problems” sent to the past from the future. Joe goes about this job relatively smoothly, having no problem violently shooting his targets as they arrive at the location.

The plot shifts when Joe recognizes the hit he is ordered to kill — himself. The older Joe, sent from 30 years in the future and played by Bruce Willis, quickly takes advantage of his unwillingness to shoot his future self and manages to escape. As difficult as the situation might be to grasp, the cleverly written script allows the plot twists — and there are several — to feel entirely organic.

Film nerds will be pleased with the numerous allusions to Jean-Luc Godard — the famous French-Swiss film director who had a large impact on modern cinema — and the shrewdly named meeting places, worthy of a chuckle from any film studies professor.

Botched nose work aside, Gordon-Levitt enters into the unfamiliar territory of sci-fi thriller quite well, incorporating his seemingly natural charm while maintaining the film’s die-hard tone. Willis acts like a typical Bruce Willis character, and the veteran actor plays his role well, guiding the film’s younger star through the world of sci-fi gunslinging.