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BrotherReed:
Since you\'re interested, I\'ll post my mini-review of [b]In Time[/b]: \"The biggest problem with prescient, high-concept sci-fi these days is attention span. It\'s not so much that the pacing or editing is too fast; rather, like the flawed-but-underrated Surrogates a couple of years ago, In Time has a fascinating premise but is a little too distracted by chases and gunfights to fully explore it. Essentially the movie is its idea. Once you\'ve established a world in which people only age to 25 and must then either acquire more time to use as currency or perish, the script almost writes itself. Part Robin Hood, part Bonnie and Clyde, In Time plays like a critique of class struggles and capitalism gone awry. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is the 99% who inherits 100 years from a suicidal patrician and sets out to overthrow the oppressive system - er, that is, stay in fancy hotels, gamble in upscale casinos and cavort with rich moguls\' daughters. It\'s only when he\'s wrongly accused of stealing the century he was given that he becomes a fugitive along with Sylvia Weis, who never wanted for anything but suddenly finds herself with mere minutes on her life clock. A quick Stockholm Syndrome later, they are working together to extract horded time from the wealthy and spread it among the lower class. It\'s consistently entertaining, but I can\'t help but wish the writers had let us in on more back story. How did this system get implemented? Are people born with a clock on their arm, or is this done at birth through institutions? If so, are there children born in the wild, free from this constraint? It\'s stated that the cost of living is artificially raised. Is time subject to inflation? Why can there only be so much of it? Why is the system of transferring time from one person to another so sloppy? Is it just to bolster the world of competitive wrist-wrestling? The film is at its best when it gives us space to ponder its central questions rather than trying to relate its fictional world to our real one. Something about hearing on-screen millionaires lecture on watching people die all around you also rings false. If nothing else it does give you something to talk about on the way out of the theater, and that alone puts it above most of the movies playing at any given time.\" So there you go. I\'d also like to mention that the director, Andrew Niccol, is responsible for one of the greatest sci-fi movies of the 90\'s, a little gem called Gattaca. He also wrote and produced The Truman Show. In Time is not as good as those films, but there\'s a lot of talent behind it nevertheless. Co-stars Cillian Murphy, the sort of normal dude from The Big Bang Theory, that slimy guy from Mad Men. OH. And since I know a lot of you here like Firefly, as I do... I could have sworn the rich character in the beginning was Sean Maher. He is not. The resemblance is uncanny.

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