Anyone? Saw this tonight. Stars Justin Timberlake in a world where the currency is minutes of your life.
The concept was pretty cool. It wasn’t as good as Gattaca, but had a similar feel. Though it was the future, the cars were all retro with updated sound effects, and it had kind of a classic feel in the rich scenes.
Great cast - Olivia Wilde, Cillian Murphy, Matt Bomer, Leonard from BBT, Angel’s son.
There were a few silly moments, but over all it was fun and did fairly well with a very cool premise.
Just saw it today. I liked the premise but wanted to like the movie more than I did. The pace was little too slow and as with almost any sci fi movie you could nitpick it to death. Definitely some good ideas at the core of it though.
Just saw it today too. I kinda liked it? But it was a bit depressing, somehow. Are we doing spoilers?
[spoiler]it’s more a Econ-fi film than a sci-fi film, I thought. Basically, this is an anti-capitalist film: the have nots work from day to day and have no power, and the ones with all the time control the means of production. It’s just that now, everything is literal - the proles die hen they stop being useful, and the capitalists can control everything, even life and death.
Being somewhat of a wonk, I immediately wonder, though. How is time created? It can’t be by fiat, I assume. If so, each new birth only brings 1 years worth of time into the system, and only on their 25th birthday. Wouldn’t this be massively deflationary, rather than inflationary?
I get the feeling that a lot of exposition was left unsaid. Willis really was hurting the people he as trying to help, as the timekeeper said - dumping a million years into the system would simply be massively inflationary, and nobody wins. And what was his plan after that? Keep robbing banks? In the future, haven’t they invented policemen?
The only way out appears to be anarchy on a grand scale, but 2 people robbing banks isn’t too going to do that. And even if they do, so what? Th rich guys hole up and simply wait for everyone else to die.
Liked it conceptually and visually more than I did narratively. Not enough entertainment in it to prevent me picking apart the underlying structure while watching it (an entertaining movie I won’t care while watching it and will do that later).
One thing I was curious about is whether it was intended to be the far future (the ages of some of the characters preclude it from it being the near future) or a parallel world.
I almost have to hope they’re going for parallel universe, since that’s really the only way to explain some of the oddities of the concept. As mentioned above, where is this time coming from? How can it be so well-monitored and controlled, yet the Timekeepers seem to be so ineffectual otherwise?
And at the end, when Will, pretending to be the Timekeeper, runs over to the Timekeeper’s car and asks dispatch for time, shouldn’t they have known that the Timekeeper would have run out several minutes before and suspected that something was up?
I’ve been meaning to write up something discussing the details of the time as money system, in addition to my review, but I haven’t found the time yet. blush
It is yet another example of a society that is thoroughly, but ineffectively, surveilled (the V ships in the recent series had this problem).
Everybody has personal security but nobody, apparently, had system security (including over the time itself, it is a society where essentially everybody walks around with all their money taped to their forehead).
The timekeepers apparently know at all times how much money is in each zone but not who has it or any direct tracking of its transactions.
The interesting question, to me, is since presumably humanity did not always exist on this economic basis (in this universe), how exactly would the world have changed over to it.
Assuming the underlying controls on the total amount of time in the economy are solid (whatever those may be) the more disruptive act would likely not be to give it away, but to destroy it. Don’t take the time away from the rich people, kill them with the huge reservoirs of time unspent (since apparently if you die with a balance that time is then unavailable).
I thought it was very medium. My biggest complaint was whenever the main character decries the rich people as “thieves”. “You stole this time!” He would say. So far as anything in the movie tells us, it’s a free economy and the wealthy worked their way up the ladder…so where does theft enter into it?
The wealthy are artificially manipulating the prices, wages, and taxes to keep the poor that way without providing them any real hope of accumulating any wealth.
The one thing that seemed to be missing in all the money-time analogs (I did like the Everything’s 99 Seconds or Less store) was a time lottery.
Nothing in the movie indicated that prices were being adjusted according to anything other than market forces, other than to fight the artificial inflation caused by the heroes. Nor is there any indication that they do anything to stop people from climbing the ladder – point in fact, they specifically say that people can and do get into other timezones regularly.
It’s specifically stated and shown that “They” raise prices every day, in order to keep the poor down. This is something that’s happening before the protagonist and the wealthy love interest go on their inflationary crime spree. This may not make any more sense in terms of economics than the little glowy timers on people’s arms do in terms of biology, but it is established that this is happening in the movie.
Furthermore, Justin Timberlake’s character is shown to have “climbed the ladder” by seemingly legitimate means–a free gift of 100 years followed by winning even more time at a poker game (with other consenting adults)–and the official reaction seems to be that he is guilty until proven innocent. It’s implied that, having confiscated his time (on mere suspicion), “They” are just going to run down his clock and let him die (I think they leave him with a couple of hours).
As MEBuckner mentioned, the speech given to Timberlake before he gets the century gift includes the tidbit that the wealthy cheat the system to keep the poor poor.
In fact, they specifically say it is the other way, that moving between timezones is uncommon.
And the almost last line of the film is
That the timekeeper became a timekeeper because it was his only way out of Dayton, and then Timberlake responded that once he (the timekeeper) found his way out his job was making sure nobody followed him.