In Time (2011)

Surprisingly enough, this turned out to be a far better movie than I expected. The ideas are not exactly original, the acting could have been better and there could have been more to the story. Still, it was quite an alright story with a well written ending. It most certainly was not "pointless" as I keep hearing!

I actually am impressed with this movie, considering the fact that I don't usually like futuristic movies, nor do I sci-fies. The film is well built up, I really liked the detailed background of Will and Sylvia, because it does make the movie better in the perspective of the great twist in Sylvia's personality at the end. I loved the acting as well.

I just saw "In Time" again for the third time or so, and it's my new favorite movie. It's hard science-fiction, much harder than most. The future doesn't look like "the future" at all, but more like the 1970s. The cops drive 1970 Dodge Chargers, not goofy electric golf- carts. There are phone booths, no cell phones, and the Internet is not a major force in anyone's life. No one is emigrating to Mars, as in "Gattaca (1997)" -- also written by Andrew Nicol -- and there are certainly no star-ships, and no space aliens. The single technology that has gone forward is medicine, and that life clock thing, naturally. "No one dies; no one gets sick." That's the thing that makes it "hard" science-fiction; it resists throwing a bunch of stuff on the wall, instead holding tightly to its premise. Because of the immortality-with-a-price premise and the 1970s action-movie styling, comparisons to "Logan's Run (1976)" are unavoidable. Whereas "Logan's Run" envisioned a future where we got everything we ever wished for, only to see it wind down, "In Time" envisions a sort of stagnant future that one rarely imagines in a movie, not even obviously dystopian, just stagnant. This is what I love about the movie: it's not really about immortality at all, but about Economic Fascism. In the movie, people have jobs making widgets, making just enough to live day to day. Prices are methodically inflated so that no one gets ahead. There's no upward mobility whatsoever. It's like "1984", except Economics (with the help of that clock thing) does all the work of the secret police. It's a metaphor for our modern post-2008-crash economy. This movie reminds me a bit of "The Island (2005)", which I also liked, a big difference being that there's no "secret". The characters in "In Time" tacitly consent to their situation. This is a fast-paced, beautiful action-adventure science-fiction film with a brilliant premise, destined to be a cult classic. Hollywood, please make more movies like this.

No one seems to understand the economic and symbolic significance of this movie. Anyone who has traveled the world understands exactly what the director and Timberlake are saying. Travel the world and you will notice that everything is priced according to what each local population can afford to pay for it. Nothing is priced according to how much it costs to manufacture, but why? Because manufacturing costs have plummeted in the past few decades but pay rates have stayed the same, while retail prices have gone up? There is no such thing as the Free Market anymore, prices are set according to the country or District you live in. You sell your time for a paper currency that only has manipulated value according to what they deem products cost in your country. In Time is a symbolism of real life, of what has happened to our world.