In a strange and utterly coincidental way, the new film by writer-director Andrew Niccol (GATTACA, LORD OF WAR, and writer of THE TRUMAN SHOW and THE TERMINAL) is one of the most relevant films in theaters right now — a time when protestors are gathering in the streets of many major cities around the U.S. talking about the nation's wealth being the hands of a very few. IN TIME is about just that subject, only the currency in Niccol's version of the not-to-distant future is not money but minutes.
The plot centers on a future where all humans stop aging at 25, but once they hit that age, a clock in their forearm is activated that goes for exactly one year. People can use time to buy goods, gamble, bribe; others simply take it from you, especially if you live in a "time zone" that looks a lot like a ghetto. Justin Timberlake plays Will, who is given more than a century's worth of time by a man about to commit suicide, which makes him a target in his neighborhood of both local thugs (called Minute Men, led by Alex Pettyfer) who simply take your time, and Time Keepers (led by a 50-year veteran of the practice played by Cillian Murphy), who are more like police and keep the time poor separate from the time rich.
There are some really interesting ideas at play with IN TIME, and I love the idea that every single person in this movie is supposed to look 25 years old. When Will greets the hot woman (Olivia Wilde) in his kitchen one morning before going to work, we assume it's his girlfriend or wife, when in fact, it's his mother.
When Will gets his massive amount of time, he decides to travel to one of the nicer time zones, where he meets one of the richest men in the world, Philippe Weis ("Mad Men's" Vincent Kartheiser) and his lovely daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), who is attracted to Will's reckless spirit (apparently the poor are the only ones who run, drive cars or swim, since those things could lead to a fatal accident, which the rich are afraid of). But when the Time Keepers catch up with Will (they think he might have killed the suicide victim for his time), he takes Sylvia hostage to keep himself alive.
IN TIME is basically a chase film with some clever sci-fi moments thrown in, and I would have been OK with that if the filmmakers had tried just a little bit harder to make the conventional parts of its story more original. I've got nothing bad to say about most of the performance here, and I think Timberlake has gotten to the point as an actor where he has nothing to prove. If anything, I wish his character would have been given a little more depth, because I think Timberlake could have easily handled a more fleshed-out role. I did have issues with Sylvia Weis, more in the writing than in Seyfried's portrayal. She's a bit too easily turned to the side of the Will and his impoverished brethren, and it just makes her seem shallow... more shallow.
But a lot of the adjustments that Niccol has make to the world as a result of the shift from money to time is impressive and smart. I was also really impressed with Murphy's performance as the unflappable Time Keeper, whose slowly revealed backstory is one of the film's most interesting elements.
IN TIME isn't tough to sit through, and at moments it's actually hugely enjoyable and smart. But we've seen Niccol do better in the sci-fi environment, and simply adding in a few more action scenes isn't going to make up for the film's plot shortfalls. In Time commits the ultimate crime by occasionally being dull and getting lost in the budding romance of its leads, when it should be pushing forward and fine tuning and better defining its universe (which looks a lot like today). I'm still mildly recommending it, but it left me wanting more, and not in a good way.
