BEFORE: Ah, an unexpected theme has developed - in addition to all being sci-fi based, this week's films all seem to feature people who are on the run. "Total Recall", "Paycheck" and "Looper" all featured fugitives who were being hunted down by cops, criminals or corporations, and that looks like it will continue tonight. Linking from "Looper", Joseph Gordon-Levitt was also in "Inception" with Cillian Murphy (last seen in "Tron: Legacy").
THE PLOT: In a world where time has become the ultimate currency, people stop aging at 25, but there's a catch: they're genetically-engineered to live only one more year, unless they can buy their way out of it.
AFTER: It's another well-meaning high-concept sci-fi film, but once the premise was explained, this became sort of one-note. They didn't really DO anything with the concept for a long time, and then when it finally started to go somewhere at the end, it was too late, story over.
The film fell just short of making some kind of larger statement which we could apply to our daily lives in the present, which is often the point of sci-fi, to act as a cautionary tale. Now, while I'm happy the movie didn't hit me over the head with some kind of social allegory, neither did it put itself out there and offer up some overarching point. That earns it a very middle-of-the-road score.
Furthermore, we never learn who set up this crazy system, and how, or why. This can't have happened overnight, so how did they get there? Who thought it would be a good idea to terminate people when their clocks ran out? Who agreed to have these clocks put in their arms in the first place?
Besides, a world where the rich get richer and the poor get deader doesn't seem to correlate too much with the world of today, so I'm not sure why the situation got brought up, or how I'm suppose to apply the lesson to my life, whatever the murky lesson happens to be. Is this meant to show rich people how important poor people are? Because without poorer people's contributions to the system, there's no system for the rich people to take advantage of. Is this meant to show poor people that they're suppose to rage against the machine? If so, that's an odd takeaway.
Also starring Justin Timberlake (last seen in "Bad Teacher"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Les Miserables"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Cowboys & Aliens"), Johnny Galecki, Vincent Kartheiser, Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer.
RATING: 5 out of 10 tollbooths
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