In Time

- not a day over 105

This week's movie rental was the 2011 science fiction film In Time which stars Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, and Cillian Murphy, and which posits a future where people don't age biologically beyond 25 and in which time has become the main bargaining substance, giving a whole new meaning to that expression 'time is money'.

I really liked the movie. So much science fiction has been done on this theme - I remember it being a peripheral element in C. J. Cherryh's Hugo award-winning Downbelow Station - and I don't doubt that some day soon science will do away with human senescence. When people are old, the outward evidence of that - cellular damage - is what often defines them in today's society, but in a future where no one's body ages, what may define the old will be their accumulated experience instead, experience that might make them more formidable and compassionate, or that might make them want to just stop being ... as Queen asks, who wants to live forever? :) and as the main character of the movie states, No one should be immortal if even one person has to die.

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars in his review. Here's the beginning ...

We are all of us engaged in the trade of buying and selling time. When we stop smoking, we hope we are buying years. When we drink and drive, we are willing to sell a few years. But those are gambles with the odds. "In Time" is a science-fiction movie in which time is a fungible commodity. Are you willing to pay for 10 minutes of sex with an hour of your life?

The premise is damnably intriguing. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, maker of such original sci-fi movies as "Gattaca" (1997) and "S1mOne" (2002), it involves once again people whose lives depend on an overarching technology. In this case, they can buy, sell and gamble with the remaining years they have to live ...

Here's the trailer ...