Review: In Time

Plot: In the future, time has become the ultimate currency and genetic alteration has allowed people to stop aging at 25 years old. Upon reaching 25, the countdown begins and in order to stay alive everyone must work to buy themselves more time or die within a year. The rich can buy their way out of the situation, while the rest are left to negotiate for immortality. When a struggling young man, Will Salas (Timberlake), comes in contact with a “millionaire,” he is gifted more time than he can imagine. Accused of murder, Will is a fugitive on the run and becomes determined to bring down the entire system by any means possible.

Review: Review: I thought the movie was pretty entertaining but not perfect. I approached this movie with a bulls-eye on Justin Timberlake mainly because he falls into the “musician turned actor” crowd and I wanted to see if he’s experienced any growth. I was pleasantly surprised by his effort even if his performance fell a little flat for me. I can’t pinpoint it exactly but something made me feel that he wasn’t the best choice for the role of someone portraying someone from the ghetto. Timberlake gave a great effort which was reflected in his performance and you can see that he’s not the typical musician transitioning into this craft and was actually pretty entertaining throughout the film. I really did enjoy his input and look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.

I was indifferent about the performance of Amanda Seyfried. I’ve seen her in other projects and she always seems to impress but this movie was definitely something different for her. I wasn’t very pleased with her character but it’s hard to fault her in the role as her character was intentionally one dimensional. She’s one of the up and coming actresses that I really enjoy to and certainly look forward to seeing more of her in the future.

Cillian Murphy is Cillian Murphy. He’s extremely talented, a wonder to watch, and usually provides a tone to a movie that’s hard to duplicate. With that said I wasn’t satisfied with his character but not at the fault of the actor. Murphy actually brought a lot of life and insight into his character and did the best he could with what he had. Poor concepts, dialogue, and cliche ideas really prevented this from being one of his more memorable performances. Seriously, how many sci-fi “cops” in goth attire does the film industry need anymore? I still don’t know why they even dressed that way. He was easily one of the highlights in this film.

I really had issues with the progression with the film as the story progressed. The first act was fine and began to setup an interesting world, characters, and featured Olvia Wilde, (as the hottest M.I.L.F. to hit the screen in recent memory), but somewhere around the second act everything just falls apart. The plot has serious holes throughout the film that are never answered which made me think that the script could have used a bit more polish throughout in order to really nail it. An example of a hole, without revealing too much, comes in the form of a border. The film setup a premise in which it was extremely costly to cross the border from the ghetto into the suburbs and set it up throughout the early stages of the first act as an obstacle. After paying the toll, and transitioning a few scenes, the issues with traversing back and forth through the ghetto and suburbs vanish. You then see the characters take some “back road”, that was never mentioned throughout the film, to travel back and forth freely at no-cost. It was a huge problem for me because if this back road always existed then why the hell would anyone pay the toll?

At times this movie hints at having more “substance” like this one scene where Will Salas jumped out of a 2nd story window to evade pursuers because people are very cautious about the risks they take with their lives. Most people refused to follow implying that they couldn’t afford the healthcare needed if they hurt themselves since “time” is the currency used for everything. It’s subliminal but noticeable and little nuances like this are used to provide some insight for the viewer into the world that Will Salas inhabits, but there’s so few of them that you don’t really get a fully realized idea.

The movie does have it’s commentary on real life society, and deals with some serious issues regarding life decisions and ramifications, but those threads never truly evolve and instead the movie transforms around the halfway point into a “Bonnie and Clyde” film. The story leads the viewer into believing that there’s a much larger scope to the film, and that there would be some great revelation to make the conclusion of the film seem satisfying that never really pans out. I just felt disappointed that the movie chose not to further exploit those themes and be something a little deeper and built on the great premise introduced in the first act.

Overall I did find myself enjoying this movie a lot more than I expected. I went in with a bulls-eye for Timberlake and walked away with better impressions than I expected. I would have liked for the movie to further explore the wondrous world that was established early on in the film but In Time for me failed to meet that hope. I don’t foresee a franchise out of this movie and wholly expect this film to be one of the “one-offs” that’s great to watch on cable or DVD.

In time will be out on DVD and Blu-ray everywhere on January 31st.

I give “In Time” a 6 out of 10.