I want to be careful here about calling this Anti-Mustachian, because there are elements that are and aren't.
The premise of the movie is that Time is literally Money. That is to say, there is no money. Everyone is biologically frozen at age 25, but you also get a digital countdown clock on the inside of your forearm that starts you off with one year when you turn 25. If it gets to zero, you have a heart attack and die instantly. When you work, the company pays you in time. When you buy a coffee, a bus ride, pay your rent etc., someone deducts time.
Also, there is no security on your wrist. If you fall asleep or get knocked out, someone can totally walk up to you and steal all your time.
The rich have thousands of years on their clocks. The poor live day to day in their ghettoes, just making enough to scrape by until the next day.
I know. Metaphor much?
So the poor people do a *lot* of running, because they have to. Their clocks never have much more than a day on them and periodically there are dead people in the street. There are payday loan outfits that charge 37% interest (per year? Compounding period is not specified.)
Now, I get the message: the poor are living on borrowed time while the rich get richer and the cost of living rises. There is wealth inequality, just as there is in real life, and if it gets bad enough, the pitchforks come down. I get that and I believe it's a real problem in our society which is mirrored in this movie.
However.
1. The heroes are on their way to work and stop for a coffee. Really? You're going to die tomorrow if you run out of minutes and you're spending three of them on a coffee? Then the barista announces that coffee now costs 4 minutes. They grouse briefly and hand over their wrists anyway to deduct the time. I mean, shit, we're literally talking about life and death and you can't go without a coffee to save up a buffer? I guess this is how poverty perpetuates, but still ...
2. "They just keep raising the cost of living until they kill us" - paraphrasing, but the screenwriters seem to think that the cost of living increase is an intentional attempt to kill people
a) that's not how it works. The wealthy are trying to get wealthier and some are literally out to keep workers desperate, yes. They don't actually want them dead
b) the cost of living is actually cheaper than it's ever been, so that part of the metaphor doesn't work either and perpetuates a very powerful myth.
What really got to me was that even the hero, who actually had some initiative (to the point of robbing banks, playing poker against the rich etc.) couldn't wrap his head around "consuming less stuff" and starving the evil rich people that way. "Grr! I hate how they keep raising the price of this coffee everyday! But what can I do?"
The part that was, sadly correct, however, was the perpetuation of poverty. A man who has only known poverty gets 10 years suddenly and drinks himself to death. People are spending money they don't have because they don't see any hope in their futures and have never been taught about money. I get that part and I know it mirrors our actual society.
Toque.