The movie In Time comes from Andrew Niccol, who also wrote and directed Gattaca, one of my favorites. I didn’t know this until I looked it up afterwards, if I had known I probably would have made more of an effort to see it sooner. I like most of his movies. All of them, in fact.

As a movie, it’s just ok, but watching it gives you time to reflect on the premise, which is time is money. Literally. You have X seconds to live, stored in your arm somehow, slowly ticking down. When it’s gone, you die. You get paid in time and buy things with it.

The movie doesn’t fully explain where the time comes from. Fiat time? This affects the story in a background kind of way, but for the most part the story is run away from the bad guys, meet a pretty girl, run some more, make a stand, hurray. Unlike Gattaca, the premise and the plot are not so tightly entwined. The basic plot here, Robin Hood, could have worked with just about any currency. There are some plot holes, like who thought it would be a good idea to make it so easy to steal time from someone just by grabbing their arm.

Time as money is a great concept. It’s not played for laughs, but we do run through all the expected lines. “Got a minute?” “I don’t have time for that.” The world is divided into rich and poor, and as we learn, this inequality means the poor die early, but the rich don’t live (rather jealously guarding their time without taking any risks). The fixed division between haves and havenots is reminiscent of Gattaca, as is the setting. The future retro look, especially the cars, made me wonder about a possible connection. Oh, same writer/director, that explains it. There are small touches here that work well and make you wonder about the possibility of a time based economy, not to mention wish you could slow the movie down and enjoy the world it’s in. Yup, I want more time in my time is money movie. Ho hum story, but fantastic setting. I recommend it because regardless of what the characters on screen are doing answering the question, what would I do?, is a great exercise.

I once tried rationalizing purchases as this costs an hour of work, that costs two. Led to some terribly irrational purchasing behavior because I’d internalized the idea that I had infinite time and would be working forever, so working a few more hours hardly mattered. If I’d been given a known finite time to live, and every purchase deducted from it, I think that would have changed my attitude.

In Time has nothing in common with “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison. It does appear to copy the entire concept from a short story called “Time Is Money” by Lee Falk. The movie is better and pushes the concept farther. Having found the story after watching the movie, I was rather disappointed.