It’s always fun to see something new and with the way Hollywood has been working the passed few years, that’s getting harded to get these days. In Time presents us with a world where a life is the currency. Humans are genetically engineered to grow until age 25. At that birthday, your death clock (which is a bio-lumen clock on your left forearm) begins to tick down it’s final year. You can earn more time by working, gambling, taking loans and even stealing from others. It’s a very simple exchange, a slightly modified handshake motion and you can take and give from your own clock. In the case of banks, the time is held in a devise that looks a bit like a bar code reader. Hold it to your wrist and time is taken or given away. Now, once that timer hit zero, you drop dead (sickness and injuries are still a threat). It’s a constant fight for live for most, where “Many must die for a few to live forever,” is the motto of the rich.

In the current economical climate this premise seems all the more fitting. The “top 1%” that is constantly beratted in the headlines these days are well accounted for here. The main character, Will (played by Justin Timberlake) helps someone out who has a lot of time on his hands. He’s gifted more than a century of life, which immediately makes him a target. No one in the ghetto gets that much time with out stealing it, according to those who know “best.” The rest of the movie is an attempt at balancing the scales between the rich and the poor. There’s plenty of money to go around, the rich are just hoarding what they are ultimately stealing.

Timberlake does a fine job, it’s hard not to see him as anything but JT, but a lot of actors have that problem so I can’t really hold that against him. There’s a good cast around him too, I always like Cillian Murphy, Amanda Seyfried makes a great love interest and partner in crime. Very little is explained, no real geographic location is given, no year, how and why the life currency system began (it’s been in effect for around 100 years from what I could put together). That all works for me as the social ramifications are really what is on display here. The threat is always the clock so that made any chase scenes seem a little less daring. There are many times when Will could have and probably should have been shot and killed, but I guess the time he holds through the movie is worth more than a shot to the head.

I liked it for the most part. There’s some silly dialog here and there and the plight of the poor is always the most important. Some fleshing out of the world could have been a plus, but the movie works pretty well as is. I’d call it a good rental.