Movie Review: In Time
In Time
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Rating: PG-13
Director: Andrew Niccol
Starring: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Vincent Kartheiser, and Cillian Murphy
Description: In a future where people stop aging at 25, but are engineered to live only one more year, having the means to buy your way out of the situation is a shot at immortal youth. Here, Will Salas inds himself accused of murder and on the run with a hostage – a connection that becomes an important part of the way against the system.
In Time feels like a spectacular movie mushed together with an absolutely terrible movie. In addition to being timely in a way that no one involved could have anticipated (they probably could have re-named this one Occupy Wall Street: The Movie), it has a very interesting sci-fi premise that pays off in fun ways, some decent action, and some good performances. It even succeeds at one point at making me think of Justin Timberlake as a badass, something I would have told you previously was impossible. On the other hand… this is a movie in which at one point the main character cradles a dead body, looks up at the sky during a big old crane shot, and goes “Noooooo!” And that scene is not alone in its stupidity and ridiculousness. The result is a supremely doofy film, one that by turns made me go “huh” and giggle. But it sure wasn’t boring. And it’s not a movie we’ve seen before, which is relatively rare in this day and age.
So, in an alternate universe or the future or whatever, everybody stops aging at age 25. At that point they get a year to live, which counts down on a green digital clock somehow embedded in your arm. In this universe, time works like money. You can earn more time by working and things like that, and you can exchange time for goods and services. Much of the population barely has enough hours to live through each day, rushes from place to place, and lives in walled off ghettoes. A few very rich are essentially immortal, living in sterile suburbs, surrounded by bodyguards since they can only really die through violence. As we are told (repeatedly), “for a few to live forever, many must die.” This is not exactly a movie that’s very subtle about its themes.
So Will Salas (Timberlake) is a working stiff from the ghetto who helps out a rich guy who turns out to be suicidal. He gives Timberlake all his time and then jumps off a bridge. Will moves on up to the suburb of New Greenwich, where he meets an immortal tycoon played by Vincent Kartheiser of Angel and Mad Men fame. Will hits it off with the tycoon’s daughter, played by Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia, Red Riding Hood), and runs afoul of the “Timekeepers,” led by a “grizzled veteran” played by Cillian Murphy. Action sequences and extremely random Bonnie-and-Clyde-ness ensue.
I definitely enjoyed seeing the plot take the implications of In Time’s basic premise to their logical extreme. This isn’t a movie that totally makes sense from a plotting perspective if you hold it to the rules of a reality, I’ll admit, but I’m not sure it has to. It’s an allegory, after all. The movie has some fun with the jarring way everyone looks 25. Olivia Wilde takes a break from her busy schedule of appearing in every movie this summer to show up as Will’s mom. Vincent Kartheiser, in particular, does a decent job of playing an old man who just happens to look like a young one. On the other hand, this would be a much better movie if Timberlake wasn’t quite so badly miscast. Except for a handful of scenes like the one I reference at the top of this article, he doesn’t come across as someone with any gravitas or someone who can act or any of the things you need from the star of an big cool movie. Then again, Taylor Lautner’s action movie opened bigger than the one with Clive Owen, Jason Statham, and Robert DeNiro a few weeks ago, so maybe I don’t know anything.
Then there are some of the plot directions later on, which are, well, pretty goofy. There are time heists, car chases, somewhat gratuitous strip poker and crazy arm wrestling. But if I’m being honest I can’t really list these things as a negative. Niccol has lots of great ideas for this film, and I can’t help but cut him a little slack if they don’t fit together into a coherent movie. The action scenes are actually fairly interesting… the film stretches its $35 million budget to the limit. They’re just, y’know, allegory action scenes, so if you take them literally they don’t always make sense.
One of the biggest reasons I really enjoyed In Time was that, though its message isn’t exactly subtle, it doesn’t treat the audience like idiots. In order for the movie to make sense, or at least as much sense as it does, you have to actually understand economics. Rare is the action movie that expect its audience to know the root cause of inflation going into the theater. And yet, on another level, it’s a big dumb action movie. That’s why I would really recommend In Time, even though it has some pretty big flaws.
Affiliates
