In Time is a great idea in theory. It’s the future, and everyone on earth has been genetically engineered to stop aging at their 25th birthday. After that, they have exactly one year left to live which is counted down by a glowing neon forearm clock. In their world time is the new currency. Four minutes for a cup of coffee, a couple hours for a bus ride. They have jobs where they can earn more time. In the ghettos people live day by day, watching their clocks run down to nearly zero, hoping to just scrape by another day.
It really is a fascinating storyline. One which draws many parallels to the socioeconomic world we find ourselves in today. The rich get richer, right? If there are people struggling to make it through another day, literally, then there are also people that have figured out a way to essentially live forever. Like the fat cats of Wall Street, these men and women have amassed endless amounts of time. Their arm clocks boast centuries of time. As long as they don’t do anything dangerous – where they could end up dying – they could essentially live for as long as they have time.
The trouble with In Time is its corny execution. There is a great sci-fi movie buried deep inside, but it’s almost impossible to extract without completely remaking the movie.
Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in the ghetto with his 50 year-old mother played by Olivia Wilde. There are no old people in this movie since everyone stops aging at 25. They’re both trying to scrape by day to day. Will works at a local factory and his mother tries her hardest to pay the bills without using up all of her time.
Then one night Will meets a guy with over a century worth of time on his arm. He tells Will that life really isn’t worth living unless you can die. He’s already lived a hundred years, why does he want to live anymore? He transfers his time to Will in the night.
After a big event, that I won’t spoil, Will finds himself wanting revenge on the people that have all the time in the world. After learning what he learns from the mysterious stranger he travels to the rich part of town seeking vengeance. It’s all pretty silly because Will never goes through any kind of change he’s suddenly an action hero hell-bent on changing the broken system of time hording that the rich people have constructed.
He meets a young rich girl named Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried) who is tired of the controlling hand of her wealthy father. She wants to rebel too, and undergoes a similar nonsensical change in order to keep the plot rolling forward. Will magically becomes an action hero overnight. He’s deadly with a gun and handily beats up any of the cops who get in his way.
In Time raises a lot of pertinent issues, but fails to capitalize on them through storytelling. Instead the movie is bogged down with Timberlake’s acting and a script that calls for the repeating of key phrases later on in the movie in order to give them emphasis (“Is it stealing if it’s already stolen?”).
It’s a shame that this movie turned out so hammed up because it had a ton of potential. In the end its potential is squandered. Weighty subjects replaced by terrible acting and bad jokes (I know a good idea, let’s play strip poker while the cops are chasing us down. That makes a lot of sense right?). Is it too early to already be thinking of a remake?
