In Time may be a sci-fi actioner that takes place in the future, but it is ever so relevant for the time we live in right here and now. It is class warfare and in this case, the rich have all the time in the world and the poor are just trying to survive. Director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War) takes an intriguingly clever premise and makes it look slick and stylish. He surrounds himself with an attractive cast and a story that offers some intelligence and originality, even if there is a lot of Bonnie and Clyde towards the end. Overall, Niccol is able to execute what he needs to pretty well and makes In Time entertaining for the masses, but also makes you recognize that this world and ours are not so different.
Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in a world where everyone at least gets to live until they are 25 years-old and they never look any older than that. But once they turn 25, their clock starts and are only given a guaranteed year to live. Now you can add time to your life clock by working or if some one is nice enough, time can be transferred from one person to another by simply grabbing arms. Or you can steal it, which seems to be the most popular way to keep your clock ticking. You can have hours, months, decades, and even centuries on your clock, but once it runs out….so do you.
People say, “Time is money” and that could not be more true for the characters in this movie. If you want a cup of coffee then your cost is four minutes. If you want to use a pay phone then that’ll be one minute please. Or, if you want to buy a luxury car, well that will cost you months not minutes. Will lives day-to-day as do most of the people in his ghetto time zone. All of them are just barely getting by.
But one night while at a bar, Will meets this guy who has more time on his arm than he could ever want, and while having plenty of time can make you live forever, he is tired of it. So once Will saves this rich kid from a group who are unable to get some more time off of him, he ends up giving it all to Will. His only request is for him not to waste it and he doesn’t.
Will has the time to cross time zones and make it in to the rich part known as New Greenwich. He wants revenge and is going to try and bring down everyone he can who are covered in greed, power, and, of course, time. A perfect candidate is Sylvia Weis’s father, Philippe, who can’t go too far because of how rich he is with time. But Sylvia doesn’t share the same beliefs as her dad and while she gets kidnapped at first by Will, she soon becomes his partner in crime, and together they will bring down her father and the system that is forcing people’s time to run out.
Not only is In Time about the war between the rich and the poor, it is about immortality, survival, and running. Lots of running. And if you are going to try to change the system it is going to require breaking some laws. By doing that you will have the Timekeepers (the movie’s version of cops) on your ass and Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) has been keeping time for over 50 years. So he is pretty good at it.
Timberlake seems like a natural on-screen, but we haven’t seen what all he can do yet. We saw a little bit in The Social Network and he fits right in playing the leading man in this movie, but there is no doubt he has more to offer. Seyfried is another young talent who has more experience under her belt than Timberlake. However, she fails to add any significance to the movie and you will probably remember her hair more than her performance.
While Timberlake and Seyfried seem like they would go great together on-screen, it’s not that impressive once you see it. Their characters’ relationship is rushed and simply isn’t given enough time to develop. Now the acting isn’t bad by any means and having Timberlake and Seyfried a part of the cast certainly makes the movie more appealing. But we all know they can do better, and I bet they will.
In Time is fascinating and the green clock that is in the flesh is a reminder to live in the moment because while Will and everyone else can actually see how long they have to live, we are not as lucky or maybe not knowing is even luckier. Either way, time is precious and should be more appreciated and Niccol makes you very aware of that. His movie is essentially a fight for what is right, which is something all of us are familiar with. Sure the movie has its flaws and it does lose some of its momentum the longer it goes, but you cannot ignore its creativity or relevance. This material could have been real sloppy, but Niccol keeps it together while adding some importance to it all.
Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association and the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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