A review of In Time

Last night I watched the movie "In Time."
The core premise of this movie is one that is sound - that time is valuable.
In this movie we see a future in which our aging has been stopped and everyone is permanently 25 years old.
When they hit 25 a clock in their arm starts ticking. Everyone starts with one year on their clock. Time on that clock is the currency that the world runs on. There is no money; only time.
This is where the movie diverts from a raw concept into some serious philosophical commentary on socioeconomic policy and morality.
The phrase "for some to be immortal many must die" comes up several times within the movie. It outlines the capitalistic message behind the upper class in this movie. That message is also mirroring the way we handle money today - the few aggregate wealth and use their wealth to aggregate more wealth while perpetuating the suffering of the masses.
In short this movie touches on the topics that frame out the Occupy Wall Street movement. It shows both sides of the lifestyles that are made possible by a divergence in wealth and hints at the conflict that would occur if the wealth were evenly distributed. It hints that even distribution of wealth will collapse the economy that depends on the movement of wealth. It hints that there is no replacement for that system that has been shown to work better than the system of economic imbalance created by wealth disparagement.
This movie was entertaining and it does have multiple elements including a dash of Romeo and Juliet stirred in with adventure and a dash of Bonnie and Clyde. There is also a hint of a standard detective story for flavor.
One of the beauties of this film is that it hints at larger philosophical and moral conversations without treading on them too deeply.
It also served to fully infuriate Harlon Ellison, who has created a number of fantastic stories and concept in his day but who is rabid about defending anything he feels is his intellectual property and who demands unreasonable compensation for use of anything he feels he created.

It does leave several questions for me to ponder - and I expect others will also ponder them:
What would happen if the infrastructure that controls the economic transactions that rev up or spin down he personal clocks were to fail?
Why doesn't anyone have a cell phone?
And, of course, why do electric cars have mufflers?


These, of course, are my thoughts on the film as expressed without outlining any specific spoilers. As always, I welcome other thoughts.



The DVD & Blu-ray can be purchased from Amazon -