A movie this bad should not remind its viewers that time is limited.

Rating: 1/10 (1 November 2011)

OK, so I had high hopes for this movie. I saw the trailer and as a closet socialist loved the clear underlying theme of the rich having to keep many people down in order to maintain their power. So as I sat down in the theatre I was hoping that even if the movie wasn't up to scratch at least the underlying message would make it all worth while.
But from the very beginning there are so many flaws with this movie that I could not bring myself to enjoy it. The concept itself is so flawed that I could not bring myself to see past it.
The idea is that in the society of the future (which looks strangely like today but with slightly modified cars) there has been a breakthrough in medical science that stops people aging at 25. This is somehow achieved with the price tag that everybody must have a time display on their arm that counts ever down to zero. When you get there, you die. An interesting idea which brings up many good questions such as "is time rationed or is it being hoarded by the authorities?". Sadly these questions are lightly glossed over rather than any in depth exploration.
JT is a character in the ghetto and lives his life permanently "broke". This means he rarely has more than a day or two of life left. And here we come to the first major flaw of the concept. Everybody around JT is the same. They all have almost no life, "in the bank", all the time. And yet these people walk around casually drinking coffee (costs 4 minutes) and drinking in bars (also costs time) when they are just hours from death. Thinking about this for even a second it becomes clear that people this close to kicking it would be doing anything in their power to try and get more minutes. There would be no semblance of society as any body who was prepared to steal time off others would, and very quickly they would be the only people left alive. JT casually gives time to a girl on the street, a very nice gesture to be sure, however completely unrealistic given that at the time he had less than a day to live. Its all very well to give away money when you are broke but to give away time when you are about to die, that is a very different story. People this close to the edge all the time would act very differently from you and me, something this film does nothing to explore.
There are many many more flaws in this film but I won't go on about them. But the thing that finally tipped it for me was when they started trying to expand on the commentary of the capitalist system in the US by having outlets that lent time to the poor people in the ghetto for extortionate interest. These are the same people that seem to constantly have less than a day of life to their name. Once again this does not stand up to any real scrutiny. There is no way that a person who has allowed themselves to get down to less than a day of life is going to have any assets. If I was going to be dead in a day I am definitely selling my TV to try and get more time. I am certainly not likely to have anything that a loan shark considers capital enough to back a loan.
But enough of my whinging. In the end because this movie could have been so good I couldn't enjoy the aspects that where well done. I have focused on the story flaws because they are what annoyed me the most. I am prepared to look past JT's bad acting, I am prepared to look past the fact that the future looks just like the present but with cars that have slightly strange lights, I am prepared to look past all the poorly thought out and completely unnecessary action scenes and I am prepared to look past whatever was going on in that hand of poker. But in the end this movie is flawed from the very beginning when the society they create could never exist due to basic human nature. Very few people would ever allow themselves to be just days from death when so many opportunities exist around them to gain by taking advantage of others. This movie had so many interesting areas it could have explored but in the end it is just disappointing.
In the end if you are prepared to look past these things and you just want to see JT without his shirt drive round in a damn sexy old school E type jag and just generally be cool then you will probably enjoy this one. However if you are like me and have trouble ignoring the big holes in the basic concept and can't watch such an interesting idea be butchered then best to save the time this movie will take for something else.