Review Time

While reading a review of the new Elysium movie the writer, who was quite critical of Mr. Damon's opus, mentioned a superior film worth investigating, a 2011 production called In Time. I managed to find a copy and he's right. It's a terrific low budget/high concept roller coaster.

In a nutshell, the year is 2169 and humans have been engineered to stop aging when they turn 25. The catch is, there is no money, so from the age of 25 on you pay for everything using your time. Four minutes for a cup of coffee, 69 years for a vintage Jaguar E-type. Etc. Run out of time and you die.

Each person's time is monitored by a neon green readout on their forearms, which literally makes everyone a walking ATM machine as sharing time is as easy as shaking someone's hand. Time can be accumulated just as we currently acquire money... by working for it or, sometimes, killing for it.

The story revolves around a rich man's century of time that suddenly finds itself in the hands of an urban prole, played by Justin Timberlake, and everyone wants it for themselves.

But there's an even larger story at work, one in which those who own the most time, and can essentially live forever, decide who lives or dies by controlling its flow.

Yes, it's a dystopian movie about class warfare, but a fun one.

The movie goes off the cerebral rails about halfway through but it still offers enough thought-provoking ideas to make you want to sit and reflect a moment about what you just saw as the credits roll. In my opinion, if they'd replaced the gunplay with honest motivation (think Blade Runner) this could have been a classic sci-fi flick. Still, it's definitely worth a watch. Not streamable on Netflix, yet, but it's available on DVD.

=Lefty=