In Time

Andrew Niccol's In Time wears its themes of class and economic division boldly on its sleeve but is clever and well-cast enough for it almost not to matter. In the world of the film people stop aging at 25 but then die in a year unless they can acquire more time, which has become the only currency. The unnamed city in which the film takes place is divided into "time zones"; the rich (who possess centuries but can still be killed by violence or accident) hide in one zone while those living literally day-to-day fight and claw in another. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is one such working stiff who wakes with less than a day on his clock. One wonders what Will's 50-year old mother (an obviously not 50 Olivia Wilde) has had to do to survive this long, but chance and tragedy propel Will into the world of the fortunate after a stranger (Matt Bomer) gives him more than a century. The movie takes off after Will is falsely accused of murder and goes on the run with Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), the daughter of a time magnate (Vincent Kartheiser). Will and Sylvia become time Robin Hoods, looking to break the system by giving days away to those who fight for seconds. The movie turns into a chase, with a "timekeeper" (Cillian Murphy) pursuing Will and Sylvia through the back alleys of "Dayton", the ghetto will calls home. These scenes are executed skillfully enough, but Niccol enjoys the details more. Once Will reaches the utopia of "New Greenwich" he's marked as an outsider by the fact that he runs (the poor don't have time to stand around) and when the time that Will and Sylvia steal reaches the streets the establishment retaliates by raising the cost of living. There's a world in which two people less improbably attractive than Timberlake and Seyfried would be cast as the leads in In Time, but we aren't living in it. It's a credit to Niccol that he doesn't pause to let us enjoy their hotness but instead keeps his central up-with-regular-people message flowing,. The rich must protect themselves against dying by chance and so they don't really live; when Sylvia goes swimming with Will it's as big a risk as she has ever taken. As others have pointed out, we need movies  as economically aware as In Time and we probably need stars the wattage of Timberlake and Seyfried to be in them . In Time may resolve tself a bit too neatly (Will and Sylvia upset the status quo, but who turns the aging gene back on?), but its a piece of politically relevant art at a time when that can't be ignored.