Last week’s pic was In Time is set in 2161. The currency is time. Everyone is given 25 years at birth, then they remain 25 years old physically, but they have to start earning ‘living time’.
Just as in any major city there are areas of poverty and areas of wealth. However in this film, they are called time zones, where the poor live literally day to day, while the rich can gamble with hundreds of years at one sitting.
Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is 28 years old and works in a factory. He meets 105-year-old Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) in a bar. Henry appears to be unconcerned of the fact that he is clearly displaying over a hundred years on his clock. Will is worried for him and when the local gang, the Minutemen, turn up in the bar, everyone leaves but Will. Will manages to escape with Henry and they hide in a disused factory until the next morning.
Henry is troubled and tells Will that there is enough time for everyone, that the way they are living is unnecessary.
When Will wakes up the next morning, he sees that Henry has transferred his century to him, and looking out of the window sees him about to jump off a bridge. He doesn’t need to commit suicide though, he’s just about to ‘time out’. Will arrives too late, but realises he’s been caught on CCTV.
Now he’s ‘wealthy’ he doesn’t need to worry about going to work. Later that day he goes to meet his mother, Rachel (Olivia Wilde), so they can celebrate her 50th birthday that evening. However, his mother, after paying back a loan finds she doesn’t have enough for the bus fare to their rendezvous. Prices go up unexpectedly all the time in an attempt to control the population.
Rachel runs as fast as she can to meet Will, but doesn’t quite make it and ‘times out’ in his arms. Will decides to take revenge, but the Timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) is already on his trail.
This was an interesting concept. You wonder how folk really would live if they had to earn their time on earth. Would they appreciate it more, or would it be accepted as the norm, same as wealth and poverty are to us?
Some of this film was quite predictable, and some of it was a bit hard to find believable, but overall I thought it was well done. It had a good pace, and plenty of action.
Thumbs up.
