In Time (2011)

This isn’t the best first date

Time is money…and life.  In the future, at age twenty-five, people stop aging and must begin paying for the life.  With the rich banking years and years of living, the poor live day to day.  When Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) saves the life of a man named Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) with a huge bank of life, he’s granted one hundred years.  Helping his friend Borel (Johnny Galecki) and losing his mother Rachel (Olivia Wilde), Will travels to the upper-class region of New Greenwich to take back the life that the rich have been keeping from them.  Pursued by a Timekeeper named Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) and a gangster named Fortis (Alex Pettyfer), Will finds himself on the run with Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried) the daughter of one of the wealthiest time bankers Philippe (Vincent Kartheiser)…and he’s out to give life back.

Yeah, I’m 25….want to make something of it!

Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, In Time is a sci-fi film which was met with some legal problems at its release.  The film received average reviews from critics and fared decently at the box office.  The movie was accused of stealing ideas from Harlan Ellison’s 1965 story “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman” but also resembled a short called The Price of Life on PBS in 1987.

With an interesting concept and a decent cast, In Time had a lot of stuff going for it.  The movie’s low-tech high sci-fi feel also is rather fun and I always thinks adds to the realism of sci-fi stories.  Unfortunately, In Time suffers from taking too much time in a movie about the importance of time.

Cool…a built in glowstick

The plot for In Time is where the movie really suffers.  The idea is great…money = time, but it seems like that is where the concept could pass itself.  Timberlake just hangs around for a while in New Greenwich and then goes on the run with Seyfried…with no direction or idea of what the story should do.  The characters play Robin Hood but always seem to forget to take enough time to keep them sustained as they help people, and apparently they are the greediest people since they rarely help the two people that are helping them…I kept expecting Timberlake’s people to stand-up to help them (and they didn’t).

I love Stallone’s “Over the Top”!

The cast is pretty good.  I don’t know that Timberlake is a good match for this film and he seems a bit out of his league.  Seyfried’s not bad but her character is a bit all over the place.  I generally enjoy Cillian Murphy but his character doesn’t seem to know what to do either.  Mad Man and Angel vet Vincent Kartheiser is really good at playing somewhat slimy people, and Johnny Galecki is underused as Timberlake’s co-worker and friend.  It should also be noted that no one looks like they stopped aging at twenty-five (only Seyfried was actually twenty-five).

Just sitting here…wasting time

The effects are pretty minimal in the movie and that is a good thing.  It does make things like “time fights” kind of lame and once again, if you are kept alive by the thing on your arm, I’d think you’d keep a pretty good eye on it.  I know the idea is if you are rich, you don’t have to (aka if you have money, money doesn’t matter), but I still think they’d build in like a better warning beep or something.

In Time is a high concept movie that just doesn’t live up to the concept.  It isn’t the worst sci-fi movie you’ll see but it is a bit of a snorer.  I expected more tension and thrills in a movie all about time, but it seems like the characters are just frittering away the time they are given.