Sumit Paul-Choudhury, online editor
(Image: Stephen Vaughan/TM and © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. Not for sale or duplication.)
Time is money, and how much you're worth - which is also how long you have to live - is written on your arm for everyone to see. Once you've passed your 25th birthday, you'll never look or feel any older - provided you can keep earning time faster than you spend it. If you're a poor kid from a rough part of town, life becomes a constant race against the clock. You never hit the snooze button; you're never late for work; and you never, ever kill time, because that might well kill you.
Every second counts. So what would you do with a century?
That's the premise of In Time, the latest movie from writer-director Andrew Niccol, whose oeuvre includes a number of thoughtful science fiction films, beginning with 1997's Gattaca, set in a world of genetically-modified haves and un-modified have-nots, followed by The Truman Show, which explored the plight of an unwitting reality-TV star, and S1m0ne, which told the story of a digital actor and her Svengali-esque creator.
Like In Time, each of these earlier films uses a deceptively straightforward premise to ask questions about humanity, morality and technology. But while they were closely-observed character dramas, Niccol's new film is much more of a thriller.
Will Salas (Justin Timberlake), eking out a living in the depressed city of Dayton, sticks his neck out for a stranger and finds himself the recipient of an unexpected fortune: but, as you would expect, his sudden wealth attracts unwelcome attention from criminals and cops alike. Both the time-hoarding gangsters known as the Minute Men, and enforcers of the chronological class structure called Timekeepers, are soon on his tail.