IN TIME TRIES TO MAKE A STORY OUT OF A CLEVER PLOT
The premise of In Time, directed by Andrew Niccol, is that money could be abolished and replaced by minutes of one’s life expectancy. Today, the affluent live much longer than those below the poverty line, but the film’s science fiction premise is that there is a way to prolong life expectancy and stop the aging process, provided that humans have the wealth to pay for an extension of their lives. Those who are poor must work to gain additional years beyond a minimum (age 25), but they must also pay for food and everything else in life, so they are doomed to live only as long as their productivity suits the rich. To make a story worthy of filmviewers, Will Salas (played by Justin Timberlake) decides to end what he believes to be an unjust system. But how he does so is even more farfetched than the premise itself. MH