A poor remake of a 1987 film.

Rating: Null/10 (15 November 2011)

IN TIME is an unimaginative, formulaic, unacknowledged remake of a 1987 short film, THE PRICE OF LIFE, which itself took its premise from a 1975 short story entitled TIME IS MONEY. In a dystopian future human mortality and disease have been conquered and time has replaced money as currency. Everyone is given a certain amount of time at birth, their bodies equipped with a mechanism that ends their lives when their "time account" runs out. The philosophical implications of this were beautifully explored in the earlier, 1987 short film, which started with the protagonist as a young boy, hustling minutes and hours by buying valuables from people and selling them to visiting tourists from the rich enclave. After his sister dies after gambling away her time, the protagonist (now a young man) sets out on a journey to the enclave of "immortals" in order to save the life of his mother, who is (literally) running out of time. He gets there and meets a beautiful older woman who gradually co-opts him into the immortal lifestyle. The current film, IN TIME, copies the basic premise and plot line, contributing nothing new or imaginative to it, only Hollywood's current preachy class-envy message by way of a cliché-ridden "rich living at the expense of the poor conspiracy" plot element. The young, handsome protagonist predictably meets a young, beautiful woman who is (no surprise) the spoiled daughter of a major time-rich fat cat at the heart of the conspiracy, and who inexplicably joins the protagonist in a hot rod fueled, car chase filled, Bonnie and Clyde style crime spree to bring down the evil, corrupt time-hoarding establishment. The acting is second-rate, the effects all predictable and uninspiring. Adding insult to injury is that there is no acknowledgment of the previous film or short story, thereby fooling a number of ignorant film critics into thinking this film at least had an original, interesting premise. They are wrong.