Review: In Time

Set in the future where humans are genetically engineered to live to 25 and “Logan’s Run” is apparently played on a loop. OK, so I made that second part up. After you turn 25, you only have one more year to live, unless you ‘buy’ more time. Instead of money, everything in life is bought with time as its currency, which is pretty sweet if you’re wealthy. Justin Timberlake and his mother Olivia Wilde (!) aren’t so fortunate, having to live day by day. Timberlake comes into good fortune, however, when a time-rich stranger gives Timberlake a whole lot of his time, before the gangsters after him rub the guy out. Meanwhile, when bus fares suddenly go up whilst Wilde’s time is low, tragedy strikes. Timberlake is living the high life winning big at a casino (gambling with his life, literally) and meeting the beautiful Amanda Seyfried, when a timekeeper (cop) played by Cillian Murphy comes to investigate the aforementioned stranger’s death and Timberlake’s sudden great fortune. He goes on the run, taking Seyfried with him. Seyfried is the daughter of a bank tycoon, and Timberlake comes up with an ingenious idea to act as a future Robin Hood of sorts. Johnny Galecki plays Timberlake’s troubled best friend.

It’s funny how with sci-fi, sometimes you’ll go along for the ride, and other times, you’ll think a premise is stupid and spend most of the film completely unconvinced by it. This 2011 effort is one such example of the latter, and that’s a surprise given it comes from the normally rather intelligent writer-director Andrew Niccol (“Gattaca”, “Lord of War”). But there is good reason why I was unconvinced by just about everything in this film. Starting with the whole damn idea of it. The basic premise of this film comes from the phrase ‘time is money’. Here, in a future society, time literally has become currency. Well, time actually isn’t money, Mr. Niccol. Money is a 100% social construct, whereas time is not exclusively socially constructed. Yes, our clocks and calendars are all socially constructed, no doubt about that. However, our life-spans are another matter all together. We will all die at some point (unless you’re a “Highlander”, and that film was easier to swallow because the highlanders weren’t actually human), obviously, and at least in the real world, this cannot be controlled, or at least, we do not yet have the key to eternal life. Unfortunately, Niccol never really bothers to explain just how humans have been genetically engineered to not age past 25. Probably because it would sound stupid, and having Justin Timberlake remark ‘I don't have time to worry about how it happened’ isn’t clever, it’s lazy and unacceptable. If you need to create this fantasy idea of genetic engineering in order to bring in your ‘time is money’ concept, I dunno, it just seems like too much hassle for so little reward. And yet, I had no problem accepting central conceit of “The Matrix”, perhaps because the film doesn’t have to set up its worldview at the beginning because the whole idea is for it to be gradually revealed to Neo and the audience. It worked there, mostly due to the structure of the narrative. But here? I was scoffing and scoffing early and often.

Worse still, if one looks at the ‘time is money’ conceit as displayed in the film, even if one were to accept the idea of time used as currency, it proves rather pointless in execution, really. This is because if time were money, then...things would play out just the same, except with time used instead of money. What I mean is, this film plays little different to any movie about monetary wealth and greed, it’s just a substitution of time for money that has changed. Instead of the guy with the most money controlling society, it’s the guy with the most time...which is really money. Basically, it means you can either be James Bond or a James Bond villain. It’s actually pretty boring, predictable, and prosaic.

So no, this film did not engage or convince me at all. For a smart guy like Niccol, he’s made a surprisingly dumb, predictable film. I’m honestly shocked that he hasn’t been able to see just how dumb it is. The idea of only reaching the age of 25 before having to buy more years is rife with questions that Niccol seemingly hasn’t thought of. I mean, are plastic surgeons obsolete in this stupid fantasy future? I guess they all ended up committing suicide. And what good is ‘buying’ more years when you can just as easily get hit by a bus or murdered tomorrow? I just don’t see ‘years’ or ‘time’ being much good as currency and therefore not much good as a social constraint or manipulation tool. Hell, it proves so damn easy to overthrow things and steal time back anyway, so why bother going to all the trouble setting it up? (Though it takes Timberlake and Seyfried 90 minutes to figure out what you’ll figure out in 15 minutes). Meanwhile, although Niccol shows that an enormous effort has been made in creating this genetic engineering social constraint, I was disappointed that those same seemingly smart people haven’t bothered to advance things much more than that. In other words, society in the future looks largely the same as now. The film, and the characters in it, are clearly single-minded (At least in “Gattaca”, the singular vision was interesting and plausible). Also, one character’s dilemma involving a price hike in bus fares seems gobsmackingly easy to solve, but I guess cell phones or text messaging has somehow been outlawed in this wacky fantasy future. A future, by the way, in which surely everyone drives around like a maniac just to save time. I mean, time is money, after all. I guess roadside fatalities are enormous...oh, wait, you’re not supposed to think about that, are you?

Because the film is weaving sci-fi or fantasy with a supposed reality in a way that I found utterly unconvincing, it also means that I was unable to get into the film emotionally. Like “The Time Traveller’s Wife” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, I didn’t believe in any of it, so why should I have cared? With something that doesn’t even try to operate on a real plane of existence (“Star Wars” or “The Lord of the Rings” for instance), one can take a leap of faith, but it’s not as easy to accept a fantastical version of reality. Having said that, Timberlake is OK in the lead, and Cillian Murphy for once impressed me in a Peter Greene-esque villainous turn that represents the only good thing in the film (And might explain why Greene has seemingly vanished. He has morphed into Cillian Murphy). Amanda Seyfried, whom I normally like, is surprisingly dull, and even more surprisingly, unattractive. Must be the awful wig. Credit where it’s due, though, the casting director at least found one person who genuinely looks about 25, with Seyfried (who indeed was 25 during filming). Johnny Galecki (who looks permanently high in this), for instance, has gotta a lot closer to 45 than 25, right? (I’m pretty sure he was about 20 or so on “Roseanne”, and how long ago was that?)

The film also has a few really odd moments of dialogue that left me scratching my head, though Timberlake gives us the funniest two words I’ve heard in ages, when greeting Olivia Wilde: ‘Hi, mom!’. Hilarious. But why does Seyfried ask Timberlake at one point ‘Do you even know how to drive?’. He’s at least 25, right? I mean, I’m 32 and I don’t drive, but I’m an anomaly, so the question just seemed bizarre to me. Am I the only one who noticed this? Even more perplexing is when we hear that a character ‘drank himself to death with 9 years on his conscience’, after one character gives this character some extra years. What? Either he had 9 years or he didn’t, so how does that fit into the film’s internal logic of a society where people’s lifespan is genetically engineered? If Timberlake gave him 9 years, then he should have had 9 years on top of whatever he already had. It makes no sense, and if it does make sense (i.e. You can still kill yourself), then the whole idea of the genetic engineering just seems stupid and pointless. 

I’m sorry, but I didn’t enjoy this one at all. I couldn’t, pardon the pun, buy into it, and thought it was a complete waste of time.

Rating: C